Document Type

Conference Proceeding

Publication Date

5-21-2026

Abstract

Background: In recognition of the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center - New Orleans (LSUHSC-NO) Libraries created a digital archive commemorating the event. Included in the archive is a bibliography of literature published by LSUHSC-NO affiliated authors about the storm and its aftermath. That collection of articles now serves as the pilot for a scoping review of literature by authors beyond LSUHSC-NO. The goal is to identify and map the existing health sciences literature related to Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the federal levee system, and its impact both immediate and long term on medical education, healthcare delivery, public health, policy, and research. The pilot scoping review also served as a professional development exercise for the team of librarians.

Methods: Searches were conducted in PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, and an institutional bibliography of publications submitted by authors. Included authors: any affiliated with LSUHSC-NO during the event or at the time of publication. Included domains: Medicine, Nursing, Dentistry, Public Health, and Allied Health Professions. Included topics: impacts on medical education, health sciences research, healthcare delivery, all aspects of personal or public health, and accounts of personal experiences. Excluded topics: Veterinary medicine and animal studies not related to research, engineering studies, and environmental studies that do not include health impacts. The team chose 50 articles at random for the pilot review and used Covidence to screen those articles and extract data. Monthly meetings were held to discuss data extraction goals, naming conventions, regional, chronological, and discipline definitions, article and research focus categories, and to address members’ questions regarding the review process. The extracted data was gathered and analyzed by the team, and decisions were made to guide the forthcoming expanded review. A protocol was registered with OSF, DOI: 10.17605/OSF.IO/BT983

Results: Due to the inclusion of only LSUHSC-NO authored literature, the extracted data likely skews overly representative for certain categories: “Years Since Hurricane Katrina” - almost half of the articles were published in 1-5 Years from the event; “Article Focus” – disaster response was a component of nearly every article; "Includes Other Events" - South Louisiana experiences frequent extreme weather events; and “Health Sciences Discipline” – Medicine was the largest discipline at the institution at the time of the event until the recent past. The team is curious about if and how the data may shift when authorship is expanded beyond LSUHSC-NO for the full scoping review of Hurricane Katrina-related health sciences literature.

Conclusions: During the process, the team settled issues resulting from the undefined nature of some of the extraction fields (ex. Article focus, Journal focus) and from some members’ unfamiliarity with the data extraction process (ex. Title extraction is redundant). Reviewing the extracted data showed some gaps that the team will want collected for the expanded scoping review (ex. Country of author, Journal title). Conducting a pilot scoping review to map a subset of the gathered literature was highly valuable for the team. It informed the future scoping review, as well as provided professional development to improve the library’s systematic review services.

Comments

Poster presentation at the Medical Library Association (MLA) Annual Meeting, Milwaukee, WI, May 19-22, 2026

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