BACKGROUND Recent international and national events have brought critical attention to the Canadian public health system and how prepared the system is to respond to various types of contemporary public health threats. This article describes the study design and methods being used to conduct a systems-level analysis of public health preparedness in the province of Alberta, Canada. The project i...

The Association of State and Territorial Directors of Nursing vision for emergency preparedness is that every community, family, and individual will have a comprehensive emergency preparedness plan that minimizes the consequences of disasters and emergencies, and enables communities, families, and individuals to respond and recover. This position paper provides national and state policy guidanc...

Public health professionals are responsible for ensuring the health of the nation, which requires that planners for public health emergencies recognize that not including protection for underserved or marginalized communities poses a risk to the entire population. To assure the protection of these populations in the event of a pandemic outbreak, preparedness planning will benefit from the appli...

Federal funding supports the growth and development of public health infrastructure and preparedness. The New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services used federal funds to increase local public health infrastructure that included the hiring of health educators or risk communicators (HERCs). The HERCs are a diverse group of health and communications professionals trained in emergency com...

For decades, emergency planning for natural disasters, public health emergencies, workplace accidents, and other calamities has been the responsibility of government agencies on all levels and certain nongovernment organizations such as the American Red Cross. In the case of terrorism, however, entirely new approaches to emergency planning are under development for a variety of reasons. Terrori...

Health educators are frequently called on to facilitate community preparedness planning. One planning tool is community-wide tabletop exercises. Tabletop exercises can improve the preparedness of public health system agencies to address disaster by bringing together individuals representing organizations with different roles and perspectives in specific disasters. Thus, they have the opportunit...

In the years following the 9/11 attacks, the leadership, resources, and expertise that public health agencies across the country can bring to bear on the response to infectious disease emergencies and other catastrophic events took on additional urgency and importance. In light of this expanded mission, Congress appropriated funds to support public health preparedness at the state and local lev...

OBJECTIVE We tested the Analytical Hierarchy Process tool for its use in public health to identify potential gaps in emergency preparedness by local health departments (LHDs) in California and Hawaii during a radiological emergency. METHODS We developed a dedicated tool called All-Hazards Preparedness Squared (AHP2) that can be used by those who are responsible for all-hazards preparedness pl...

It was with considerable irony that tribal leaders began a collaboration with the University of Arizona and the Arizona Department of Health Services for training in public health preparedness, as the tribes had an extended prior history of responding to a host of hazards caused by the dominant culture. The objective of the training was to ensure that Native American communities were adequately...

This article presents the development of a program and results of a study to evaluate an online distancebased learning (DBL) program for competency-based, basic emergency preparedness training for employees of local health departments nationwide. The program was developed and implemented beginning in May 2003 by Columbia University’s Center for Public Health Preparedness (CU-CPHP), and was desi...