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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Rebecca Orfaly Cadigan, MS, Paul D. Biddinger, MD, FACEP, and Howard K. Koh, MD, MPH. Center for Public Health Preparedness, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, Landmark Center, 3rd Floor East, Boston, MA 02115, 617-384-8549, rcadigan@hsph.harvard.edu

In the event of disaster, a coordinated local response is imperative to protect the public's health. Emergency public health interventions such as mass prophylaxis or control of population movement are complex activities that require advance planning, strategic decision-making regarding resource allocation, and regular practice to be effectively implemented during a disaster. Further, they necessitate collaboration among many community agencies, including: emergency management, public health, public safety, healthcare, and government. It is therefore essential for these agencies to all have a place at the table during the planning process, and for everyone involved in community disaster response to meet and practice regularly. When planned and executed properly, exercises that simulate public health response to major emergencies can significantly improve preparedness. Large-scale functional exercises such as TOPOFF3 can be useful, but they require vast resources and planning, and by design can only test the response capacity of a select subset of the systems, agencies and individuals involved in disaster response. Single agency exercises are more feasible, but inherently prohibit the interagency collaboration that an actual disaster would require. The Harvard School of Public Health Center for Public Health Preparedness (HSPH-CPHP) has established a regional, multi-agency exercise program that includes ongoing evaluation of response capacity, encourages remediation of deficits, and results in measurable improvement in preparedness. We have found that participation in regional exercises improves preparedness at a system-wide level by clarifying individual and agency roles and responsibilities, identifying persistent communications problems, revealing gaps in resources, and highlighting potentially divergent priorities and interests.

Learning Objectives:

• Following this presentation, the audience should be able to identify the ways in which multiple agencies working together to exercise local and regional emergency plans can significantly improve public health preparedness.

Keywords: Emergency, Exercise

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered