The CONVERGE Training Modules incorporate an all-hazards approach grounded in cutting edge research from the social sciences, public health, engineering, and other disciplines. Each training module features learning objectives, lesson plans, written content, and disaster-focused case study vignettes from the U.S. and across the globe. The modules also include a list of publications for further reading as well as access to related standardized scales and measures, online resources, data sets, and other information. Each module is followed by a short multiple choice quiz. Those who receive a score of 80% or higher will receive a CONVERGE Training Module Certificate of Completion and one contact hour of general management training through the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) certification program.
This module focuses on broader ethical considerations for research. It describes how researchers can navigate ethical landmines while developing a flexible and robust ethical toolkit for researching hazards and disasters.
Release Date: January 2021
Authors: Rachel M. Adams, Candace M. Evans, and Lori Peek
Funding Support: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Science Foundation
This module defines perishable data and provides recommendations to address ethical and logistical challenges for collecting and sharing this type of data after disasters.
Release Date: May 2021
Authors: Candace M. Evans, Rachel M. Adams, and Lori Peek
Funding Support: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Science Foundation
This module defines emotionally challenging research and highlights the ways that recognizing researchers’ emotions can lead to more ethical and methodologically sound research practices in the context of extreme events.
Release Date: August 2020
Authors: Tracy Fehr, Skye Niles, Bertha Alicia Bermudez Tapia, Candace M. Evans, Rachel M. Adams, and Lori Peek
Funding Support: National Science Foundation
This module focuses on culturally competent research and offers guidance on how hazards and disaster researchers can build cultural awareness, knowledge, sensitivity, and competence as a multi-step and ongoing process.
Release Date: June 2019
Authors: Haorui Wu, Rachel M. Adams, Candace M. Evans, Melissa Villarreal, Lori Peek, and Irena Papadopoulos
Funding Support: National Science Foundation
This module examines mental health outcomes associated with disasters, with a particular emphasis on risk factors that make certain populations vulnerable to poor disaster mental health outcomes over time.
Release Date: September 2019
Authors: Rachel M. Adams, Candace M. Evans, and Lori Peek
Funding Support: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Science Foundation
This module introduces users to IRB procedures and provides advice regarding how to work with IRBs to ensure ethical approaches to extreme events research.
Release Date: April 2020
Authors: Haorui Wu, Melissa Villarreal, Rachel M. Adams, Candace M. Evans, and Lori Peek
Funding Support: National Science Foundation
This module describes the concept of positionality in the context of hazards and disaster research and practice. It highlights how understanding your own positionality–or how your different identities shape your perceptions, interactions, and experiences–can lead to more ethical and methodologically sound disaster work.
Release Date: March 2023
Authors: Candace M. Evans, Rachel M. Adams, and Lori Peek with Riley Bance, Dominique Comeau, Lin Frazer, Molly McKeown, Bella Runza, and Christine Gibb
Funding Support: National Science Foundation
This module is designed to help users identify and explain to others how hazards and disaster research can help improve the health of disaster-affected populations.
Release Date: February 2022
Authors: Alexa Hansen, Courtney Welton-Mitchell, Rachel M. Adams, Candace M. Evans, and Lori Peek
Funding Support: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Science Foundation
This module focuses on the reciprocal relationship between researchers and disaster-affected people and communities with an emphasis on ensuring that research is beneficial for participants as well as the research community.
Release Date: November 2021
Authors: Jocelyn West, Heather Champeau, Jessica Austin, Candace M. Evans, Rachel M. Adams, and Lori Peek
Funding Support: U.S. Geological Survey and National Science Foundation
This module focuses on vulnerability to hazards and disasters, with an emphasis on population groups that have been identified in the literature as especially at risk to the adverse effects of extreme events.
Release Date: June 2019
Authors: Rachel M. Adams, Candace M. Evans, and Lori Peek
Funding Support: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and National Science Foundation
This module examines gender-based violence in field research and provides an in-depth exploration of misconceptions, real life scenarios, and strategies for safer and more gender-just fieldwork practices.
Release Date: July 2021
Authors: Jerika Heinze, Rachel M. Adams, Candace M. Evans, and Lori Peek
Funding Support: National Science Foundation
If you are considering requiring or recommending the CONVERGE Training Modules, below are examples from a range of courses of ways that instructors have integrated these modules into their curriculum.
If you are looking for further reading meant to complement the CONVERGE Training Modules, please visit our Annotated Bibliographies page for additional resources.
Each completed CONVERGE Training Module is worth one contact hour of general management training through the International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM) certification program.
Please visit this page to access recent scholarly publications produced by the CONVERGE research team and our collaborators, including those related to the CONVERGE Training Modules.
Over the next two years, additional CONVERGE Training Modules will be developed and released as part of an online credentialing system.
CONVERGE is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Division of Civil, Mechanical, and Manufacturing Innovation, Program on Humans, Disasters, and the Built Environment (Award #1841338). Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF.