Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #105744

Stefanie P. Fiddner, MPH, Center for Public Health Practice, University of Pittsburgh, Forbes/Allies Center, 3109 Forbes Ave., Suite 210, Pittsburgh, PA 15260, 412-383-2232, fiddners@edc.pitt.edu, Sandra Crouse Quinn, PhD, Dept of Behavioral and Community Health Sciences, Graduate School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, 230 Parran Hall, 130 DeSoto St, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, and Gerald Barron, MPH, Allegheny County Health Department, 3333Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.

Despite the critical need for preparedness planning and intra-agency coordination in local health departments, there is a lack of preparedness guidance at the program level. Extrapolating from the preparedness planning literature, Guidelines for Program Specific Emergency Operations Plans were created to assist programs within a local health department in developing their emergency operations plans. The guidelines were adapted from an existing preparedness document to ensure consistency between the local health department plan and the broader county governmental structure of which it is a part. The guidelines were then implemented in three programs within a local health department.

Once the plans are complete, both a process and an outcome evaluation are done of the implementation of the guidelines in order to determine the effectiveness, efficiency, and usefulness of this method. Preliminary results indicate that this method required minimal resources and moderate staff time, and was indeed effective when compared to best standards, efficient because it can be integrated into existing preparedness documents, and useful to the program.

The public health implication of this project is that it will improve the local health department's preparedness capability thus promoting intra-agency preparedness planning, coordination, and organization, and making inter-agency coordination more effective. The potential also exists for this project to have broader public health implications by serving as a model for program level preparedness guidance for any local health department.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, the participant will be able to

• describe a method to develop emergency operations plans for programs within a local health department
• recognize the benefits and barriers in this method

Keywords: Emergency, Planning

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.