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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Reed Correll, Bio Terrorism Coordinator, Harford County Health Department, 119 S. Hays Street, Bel Air, MD 21014 and Andrew Bernstein, MD, MPH, Health Officer, Harford County Health Department, 119 S. Hays Street, Bel Air, MD 21014, 410-638-8410, abernstein@dhmh.state.md.us.

Local public health departments have unique opportunities during the flu season to conduct NIMS training and to practice mass prophylaxis plans. In the 2005-2006 flu season the Harford County Health Department, servicing a suburban county in Maryland's Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan area joined forces with Ripken Stadium, a minor baseball league park, to conduct the county's first drive thru flu clinic. This clinic provided us with an avenue to utilize Incident Command and exercise bio terrorism response plans while offering a service to large groups of people who have problems with mobility. The drive thru attracted not only the physically impaired, but families with small children and several buses with senior citizens as we effectively distributed almost 500 vaccinations in a three hour timeframe. Our unique efforts to mobilize the first responder community, recruit private providers, integrate triage principles during mass prophylaxis and educate the community on citizen's readiness drew the attention of all three major television stations as well as the Baltimore Sun and the Aegis a local newspaper. The public applauded our efforts and were overly enthusiastic with the drive thru and the fact that on average each vehicle was on the parking lot for no more then ten minutes with a clinic throughput of ninety-five seconds while not even having to exit their vehicle. The drive thru flu clinic is a perfect opportunity to reach out and test emergency response plans on populations with limited mobility.

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

• Recognize opportunities to strengthen emergency response plans.
• Develop relationships with community partners and other first responders.
• Implement training opportunities utilizing the Incident Command system.

Keywords: Bioterrorism, Communicable Disease

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation