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

Abstract #115908

Paul Biedrzycki, MPH, MBA¹, Geoffrey Swain, MD, MPH², Angela M. Hagy, MSPH³, Mat Wolters, MS³, Douglas Gieryn, BS, RS⁴, and Bevan Baker, CHE². (1) Milwaukee Health Department, 841 N. Broadway, room 315, Milwaukee, WI 53202-3653, 414-286-3521, pbiedr@milwaukee.gov, (2) Administration, Milwaukee Health Department, 841 North Broadway, 3rd Floor, Milwaukee, WI 53202, (3) City of Milwaukee Health Department, 841 N. Broadway, 3rd Floor, Milwaukee, WI 53202-3653, (4) Winnebago County Health Department, 725 Butler Avenue, PO Box 68, Winnebago, WI 54985-0068

The Incident Command System (ICS) is a commonly used organizational and emergency response framework for many fire departments and law enforcement agencies in communities throughout the nation. It is a far less familiar tool for State and local public health agencies (LPHAs). Homeland Security Presidential Directive (HSPD) #5 dictates that local and state governmental agencies adopt as a standard the “National Incident Management System” (NIMS) as the preferred model for emergency response policy, procedure and protocol development and practice. The ICS is embedded in the NIMS as a means of providing the necessary command and control structure to efficiently respond, mitigate and recover from an emergency incident.

The City of Milwaukee Health Department (MHD) activated an ICS both internally and in coordination with other local agencies during two bona-fide “public health emergencies” – a monkeypox outbreak in 2003 and a regional pertussis outbreak in 2004. In addition to expediting management decision-making under each scenario, the immediate activation of ICS by the MHD significantly contributed to a) rapid organization and deployment of staff; b) coordinated collection and analysis of data; c) creating effective strategic direction and resource allocation and d) development of an effective communication strategy to the public, media and other stakeholders. The ICS also provided the flexibility to accommodate other government agencies and partners during each response. In conclusion, the MHD experience shows that implementation of the ICS model for urgent outbreak response at the LPHA level can substantially contribute to the successful mitigation of public health emergencies.

Learning Objectives:

• -Describe possible ICS organizational model within LPHA for emergency response.
• -Describe ICS advantages in response and management of public health emergency.
• -Describe challenges in ICS implementation at LPHA level.

Keywords: Emergency,

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.