Projects  > Emergency Preparedness

The Center for Health Policy has taken a vital role in assuring emergency preparedness among the nation's health professionals. For the past several years the Center has focused on development of core competencies, research, and training on emergency preparedness to assure that all professional health workers have the tools needed to respond effectively.

Materials:

Guide for Planning, Designing, Conducting & Evaluating Local Public Health Emergency Exercises

Evaluation of Local Public Health Emergency Exercises

Exercises and drills within the agency and with other emergency responders in the community are essential to demonstrate readiness, provide opportunity for self-assessment and inform future activities in staff development and organizational improvement.

Although some public health agencies have been participating in emergency preparedness exercises at varying levels of intensity for many years, (for instance, in emergency drills in the area surrounding a nuclear power plant) and some have had experience with emergencies caused by natural events such as weather or flooding, many have not been considered as part of the local emergency response system. Although the potential for a Bioterrorism event has changed that, at the time this project began there were no specific standards for the public health aspects of exercises and drills, and no defined criteria for the evaluation of agency performance.

This project reviewed an extensive range of materials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), from the Centers for Public Health Preparedness funded by CDC, and from local public health departments. A project team oversees the development of all project materials. A twenty-three member expert panel, drawn from public health and emergency preparedness, contributed to the development and review of project materials. These project materials developed have been compiled in into the Guide for Planning, Designing, Conducting, and Evaluating Local Public Health Emergency Exercises. Field testing of exercise materials is still in progress.