Preparedness toolkit for practitioners

Recent reports by CDC and CSTE indicate an urgent need for increased epidemiological capacity in state and local health departments to support epidemiological functions across the board (preparedness, environmental health, maternal and child health, and more). Furthermore, by definition, preparedness enables us to engage in training, thinking, processing and compilation of artifacts, supplies, tools, and other materials that could be useful in unexpected situations/events. An epidemiological preparedness toolkit for public health practitioners may be formulated at two levels. First of all, trained epidemiologists would need the full array of tried and tested epidemiological tools, plus appropriate new techniques for use with emerging/other diseases. Given state of the art laptops and personal computer systems; NEDSS, Epi Info, SPSS, SAS, and other relevant computing programs, along with advanced epidemiological techniques such as life-table analysis and multivariable analysis would fit into this first category. However, at the other extreme, because of reports that most individuals practicing as epidemiologists in health departments do not have prior academic training and because of possible difficulties that may be encountered during an emergency, we may need to specify a second level tier of the epidemiological toolkit. This could be used in most situations; comprised of basic tools including solar or motion-powered calculators, sturdy non-absorbent graph paper; and basic epidemiological skills including disease investigation, basic data analysis, hypothesis generation and testing, quick and “dirty” case-control studies in the field, and sharing epidemiological information with the public to avert panic but engender meaningful community collaboration/participation during emergency situations.