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

Abstract #111228

Barbara Quiram, PhD¹, Ron Hilliard, RN, BSN², Kay Carpender¹, and Cara Pennel, MPH¹. (1) Office of Special Programs, School of Rural Public Health Texas A&M University System Health Science Center, 3000 Briarcrest Drive, Suite 300, Bryan, TX 77802, 979-845-2387, clpennel@srph.tamhsc.edu, (2) Manager, Hospital Preparedness Program, Texas Department of State Health Services, 1100 West 49th Street, Austin, TX 78756

To effectively plan for and respond to bioterrorism and other public health emergencies in rural communities, public health and other health professionals must engage the community at large in the planning process. The goal of Rural Ready Communities is to integrate the broader group of local stakeholders in infrastructure building and rural disaster planning processes. This project contains three major components: 1) Rural Preparedness Roundtables; 2) development of a guidance document for rural community planning; and 3) technical assistance training.

Rural Preparedness Roundtables, a strategy to engage and empower community members, bring together the broader group of local stakeholders. This face-to-face discussion serves as a catalyst to facilitate a broader dialogue, builds stakeholder networks for rural communities, shares best practices and incorporates the broader community voice into rural disaster planning processes.

Best practices and rural perspectives, collected from the roundtables, are integrated into a guidance document for preparedness planning, to assist rural health care systems in preparing for and responding to bioterrorism and other public health emergencies.

Technical assistance training is offered using two modalities. A live train-the-trainer presentation to Regional Public Health Departments provides community-level training, utilizing Epidemiological Response Teams members and Bioterrorism Planners, and reinforces relationships between communities and health departments. Web-based training provides a resource for rural stakeholders to augment this training.

Effectiveness of this project is measured through process evaluation, evaluation of the technical assistance training and guidance document, and the intent to conduct follow-up 6 to 9 months post-training for process and outcome measures.

Learning Objectives:

• 3. Recognize the value of including the broader group of local stakeholders in rural infrastructure building and community planning processes.
  7. List the broader group of stakeholders needed to increase the effectiveness of a public health emergency response.
  11. Identify strategies to incorporate the rural community voice into a guidance document for rural disaster planning.

Keywords: Rural Communities, Bioterrorism

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.