Examination of Public Health Emergency and Response Data from H1N1 planning: A review of the past to prepare for the next H1N1-like pandemic

Purpose: A qualitative analysis of self-reported data collected via a monthly assessment from 62 awardees funded to prepare and respond to the H1N1 epidemic through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Public Health Emergency Response (PHER) grant. Methods: The data used were from PHER monthly assessments. From October 2009 to March 2010, 62 PHER awardees self-reported monthly on how the PHER funds were expended. The monthly assessments contained information on expenditures, barriers, urgent program needs, and lessons learned. Each of the 62 PHER awardees provided qualitative data on urgent program needs.

Results: The qualitative results illustrated that 31% of awardees (19 out of 62) had at least one urgent program need. The provisional data show that 16% of awardees had issues with vaccines, 21% expressed issues with getting additional supplies, and communication between federal, state, local agencies, and/or the general public were an issue for approximately 63% while the availability of funding was an issue for 37% of awardees. This presentation will focus on the urgent program needs which were categorized into themes. Conclusions: Based on the results of the qualitative analysis, urgent program needs were identified in the areas of vaccine availability, communication, availability of funds, and supplies to help the public health community to prepare and respond to the next H1N1-like pandemic. Additional resources and guidance were identified by awardees as urgent needs in various programmatic areas.