This report summarizes sessions that RAND researchers convened during the 2010 Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations conference to generate a national policy agenda addressing challenges to effectively engaging nongovernmental organizations in disaster response and recovery and to identify potential policy and program recommendations to address these challenges.

Community Resilience: Practical Applications to Strengthen Whole Communities in Disaster blends resilience theory and empirical analysis with lessons learned from recent activities to implement and test community resilience strengthening strategies and measure resilience progress. Contributions from key settings and disciplines on the role of resilience theory and science in local implementation are included, providing a stronger operational framework for resilience science than has previously been offered. The book also elevates the discussion by integrating theory where practical handbooks have missed those considerations.