Emergency Preparedness for CHS Public Health Staff

On September 11, 2001, the lives of Americans changed dramatically and the attention of the nation focused on the need to prepare for the possibility of terrorist attacks and the resultant mass casualties. Public health emergencies since 2001 such as the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in 2003, the Hurricane Katrina disaster of 2005, and the very real possibility of pandemic influenza have underscored the need for disaster preparedness beyond terrorism related concerns. Nurses are a diverse population and comprise the nation's largest group of public health professionals. Their willingness to come to work and remain at work during a disaster is vital to an adequate public health disaster response. The literature reveals that this willingness is affected by the level of their personal and family disaster preparedness and that despite encouragement to prepare, they do not act on this encouragement. The Health Belief Model provides a useful framework for crafting a set of interventions that would result in nurses in public health taking action to personally prepare for disasters by influencing their perception of susceptibility to disasters, severity of disasters, benefits of preparation and by eliminating barriers to preparation. The outcome of a successful intervention program will be a public health nursing workforce able and willing to respond to a disaster, and a workforce that will work throughout all the phases of the disaster. This presentation will describe one such intervention program among employees of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health.