Oral

The nation’s response to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005 underscored the need to enhance our disaster preparedness at the family, community, state and federal levels. This session will discuss diverse strategies to meet workforce requirements necessary for disaster preparedness and response. Our first two presentations will focus on a Massachusetts collaboration to build emergency preparedness capacity through the formation of a volunteer medical corps. Presenters will describe this model collaboration among the public health departments of seven Massachusetts towns. The process of training the volunteers with hand-on experience will then be described. Our next two presentations will discuss the roles of Emergency Medical System (EMS) providers in developing a disaster preparedness and response workforce. First, the results of a national survey of EMS providers will be presented, focusing on their training in core areas of public health emergency preparedness. Next, their potential role will be discussed, including participation in vaccine administration, antibiotic/antiviral dispensing, case and contact tracing, surveillance, and health care facility evacuation and mass patient transportation. Our final presenter will discuss the results of a survey of the perceived self-efficacy of public health workers to respond to various types of emergency situations.

Session Objectives: At the end of this session, participants will be better able to: • Identify the benefits of forming a collaborative, sub-regional volunteer medical corps • Describe the best practices for recruiting, training, and tracking volunteers • Identify the potential roles of prehospital medical providers (EMTs and Paramedics) in augmenting the traditional public health and medical response to public health emergencies • Recognize the challenges facing public health personnel in adapting to their new roles during public health emergencies, and apply theoretical models to identify key factors that determine risk perceptions among the workers

CE Credits: CME, Health Education (CHES), Nursing