Rapid science & research: A model for overcoming the challenges

The need for epidemiological and clinical information has the potential to be critical in understanding critical uncertainties that surround time-sensitive situations and enable good decision-making, asset allocation, and recovery.  Unfortunately, our current disaster response capabilities do not build off of the existing public health practice platforms, designed for understanding acute health needs, to effectively enable short-term and longitudinal research needs of the situation.  How can we utilize existing infrastructure and harness the capabilities of health officials, researchers, and citizens to help answer pressing questions of concern? This presentation will highlight a new model being developed by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support timely research in a disaster setting.  This effort seeks to help translate past recommendations to improve our capabilities for the rapid collection of data by public sector, academic and, community-based partner researchers during and after local and national incidents.  Discussion of strategies for new and sustainable infrastructure include the creation of: a new repository of pre-approved data tools and surveys focusing on a range of environmental health incidents; a publicly accessible web portal to help researchers to quickly develop useful field instruments, forms and other guidance; collection of timely medical data and biospecimens; and the training of researchers and responders to understand their role in the response, and to be safe.