“Natural Disasters” Has Changed to “Disasters” with 2009 MeSH.
For those interested in searching for emergency preparedness and disaster response materials in MeSH (Medical Subject Headings) and PubMed, take a look at the new MeSH descriptors listed here.
- Avalanches
- Climatic Processes
- Cyclones
- Droughts
- Earthquakes
- Floods
- Geological Processes
- Hospitals, Isolation
- Infectious Disease Medicine
- Landslides
- Nuclear Power Plants
- Resilience, Psychological
- Surge Capacity
- Tidal Waves
- Tornadoes
Looking at the MeSH Browser using the 2009 MeSH, and when entering the search term “hurricanes” a searcher is brought to the entry for “Cyclones”. “Hurricane(s)” is now an entry term for cyclones and not for “Natural Disasters” for that has changed to “Disasters” with 2009 MeSH.
The old heading “Natural Disasters” is being deleted and replaced by “Disasters.” Many entry terms from the old “Natural Disasters” heading have been elevated to stand-alone MeSH headings. New events, such as “Structure Collapse” have been added and specific events are no longer treed under “Disasters.” If the article discusses an event as being a disaster, indexers will coordinate with the heading “Disasters” and with the specific geographic locations of the occurrence.
