Are you Ready, New York? Developing and Piloting an Evaluative Tool for Assessing a NYC Emergency Preparedness Program

The Incident Based Distribution Program (IBD) operated by Ready New York mails emergency preparedness literature to areas recently affected by emergencies in order to increase public safety and encourage New Yorkers to prepare for emergency situations. IBD had not been evaluated to determine whether the program actually increases public preparedness. The Capstone team developed and implemented a randomized experiment, distributing surveys to both control and treatment groups, to assess whether receipt of the materials had a measurable impact on emergency preparedness. The Capstone team used survey results and qualitative data from focus groups to provide recommendations on how the program can be modified in order to achieve its mission.