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Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to assess the national implementation of disaster preparedness education in New Zealand primary schools through the dissemination of What's the Plan, Stan?, a voluntary, curriculum-based teaching resource.


Design/methodology/approach
– Results and findings from a focus group study with school teachers and local civil defence staff in 2011 and a nationally representative survey of schools in 2012 were analyzed to identify intervening, facilitating and deterrent factors of uptake and use of the resource.


Findings
– The main intervening factors between resource promotion and school teachers' awareness of the resource are word of mouth among school teachers and teachers' proactive lesson plan research. The strongest facilitating factor was school-wide use of the resource. Lack of awareness of the resource and the perceived need for teacher training are the greatest deterrents to use of the resource.


Practical implications
– Based on the findings, several recommendations are provided for increasing use of the resource including use of web-based technology for teacher training, integration of disaster preparedness messaging into other children's programs, ongoing evaluation and curriculum requirements.


Originality/value
– An evaluation of the implementation of What's the Plan, Stan? adds to the limited body of knowledge on the benefits and challenges to distributing a voluntary teaching resource as a national strategy for curriculum integration of disaster education. The findings and lessons are relevant for nations meeting the Core Indicators of progress toward the 2005-2015 Hyogo Framework For Action.