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

Abstract #113184

Christa-Marie Singleton, MD MPH, Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, Baltimore City Health Department, 210 Guilford Avenue, Third Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202, 443-992-8363, christa.singleton@baltimorecity.gov, Ruth A. Vogel, RN, CPH, Exercise and Training Branch, Operations Directorate, Maryland Emergency Management Agency, Camp Fretterd Military Reservation, 5401 Rue Saint Lo Drive, Reisterstown, MD 21136, and Peter L. Beilenson, MD, MPH, Baltimore City Department of Health, 210 Guilford Ave., 3rd Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202.

Recognizing that operational-focused emergency planning guidance for various components of the healthcare system is in varying stages of development, the Baltimore City Health Department created a unique series of hospital based forums, trainings, and exercises over the past two years to integrate planning and preparedness efforts for the twelve Baltimore Metropolitan hospitals, including two world-renowned institutions, The forums and trainings, built first at the local jurisdictional level, then expanding regionally and then state-wide, were designed to improve cross-jurisdictional and multi-agency understanding of activities and responsibilities of public health in the emergency response community. In 2004, the initiative was enhanced to provide hospitals with operational-based guidance to implement their internal decision-making processes for Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) activation, and to help prepare them for participation in a full-scale regional bioterrorism exercise. A key element of this adaptation was the integration of the Office of Domestic Preparedness (ODP)' Exercise and Training Building Block Approach to the instructional and evaluation process. By translating and adapting federal frameworks designed for state and local public health to local-based hospital operations, local public health leadership was able to demonstrate methods to operationally integrate the private acute care community and academic hospital entities into the building blocks for SNS needs assessment, receipt, management and allocation. Evaluation results from each hospital forum, as well as the After Action Report from this full-scale exercise, has assisted the development of these hospital forums as effective models to develop hospital-public health interagency health centered programs and services.

Learning Objectives:

• 1) Participants will be able to identify tools that can be modified and adapted to their respective agencies for integration and evaluation of hospitals and public health departments into a unified emergency planning entity
• 2) Participants will be able to articulate the application of the ODP Exercise and Training Building Block Approach used by a local Public Health Department to integrate, strengthen and evaluate a collaborative hospital preparedness planning approach
• 3) Participants will be able to develop local health department leadership in the community, utilizing existing cross-training partners to improve the rate of success

Keywords: Health Departments, Hospitals

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.

Recorded presentation