Beverly Wright is founder and director of the Deep South Center for Environmental Justice at Dillard University in New Orleans. She is co-author of a report, sponsored by the Russell Sage Foundation and released in May 2006, which concluded that minorities and low-income residents have recovered more slowly after Katrina, in part because they have less […]

Manuel Sprung, assistant professor of psychology with a focus on social-cognitive development in children. He was one of the researchers at the University of Southern Mississippi-Gulf Coast in Long Beach, Miss., who studied how Katrina has affected children’s thinking – including the impact of intrusive thoughts about the storm on their concentration levels.

Ronald C. Kessler is a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School in Boston. He directs a project called the Hurricane Katrina Community Advisory Group Initiative, which is studying the psychological impact of Katrina on survivors of the storm.

Douglas Brinkley is a professor of history and director of the Roosevelt Center at Tulane University in New Orleans. He is the author of The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast (William Morrow, 2006), which tells the story of the great storm through the eyes of its survivors and examines the failures […]

The American Red Cross is teaming with African American religious and civic groups to train volunteers who will be ready to help when future disasters occur. The Red Cross has sent trainers to work with groups from the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Progressive National Baptist Convention and the NAACP.

National Voluntary Organizations Active in Disaster helps voluntary organizations work together to train and plan for disaster response. NVOAD, based in Alexandria, Virginia, also helps build connections between the voluntary groups and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Brenda Muñiz is author of the report “In the Eye of the Storm: How the Government and Private Response to Hurricane Katrina Failed Latinos,” completed for the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), a national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C. It was issued in February 2006.

America’s Second Harvest is a network of more than 200 food banks and food-rescue groups coordinated by Craig Nemitz. By the end of November 2005, America’s Second Harvest, based in Chicago, had sent more than 1,900 truckloads carrying close to 59 million pounds of food to survivors of Katrina and Rita.

Read the U.S. Census Bureau’s state facts, including age and race, and compare them to national averages.