Public Health Preparedness and Response in Crisis

___________________________

JD Givens

Office of Research and Methodology

Centers for Disease Control

National Center for Health Statistics

Interface 2003 Conference, March 14, 2003

WHAT IS THE PUBLIC HEALTH PROBLEM?

Bioterrorism proved to be a significant public health threat during the Fall of 2001 when Anthrax outbreaks occurred in the United States using the mail as a source of exposure. Response to a bioterrorism event requires rapid deployment of limited public health resources in order to save lives and prevent others from becoming ill.

The nation's public health infrastructure currently is not adequate to detect and respond to a large scale bioterrorist

event.

Managing the BT Preparedness Initiative is complex at CDC…

Managing the BT Preparedness Initiative is complex at CDC…

Lead Center at CDC Areas of Responsibility

National Center for Infectious Diseases (NCID) Laboratories (Rapid Testing and Triage), Research, Surveillance, Hospital Preparedness, Quarantine

National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH) Environmental and Chemical Laboratory Capability, Planning, Stockpile

Public Health Practice Program Office (PHPPO) Health Alert Network, Training, Centers for Public Health Preparedness

Epidemiology Program Office (EPO) Epi/Surveillance, Detection, Investigation, Communications, Epi-X

Office of Health and Safety (OHS) Administers Select Agent Rule, Lab Safety

Consultations and Guidelines

National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)

Worker Safety, Personal Protection Devices

National Immunization Program (NIP) Vaccine Development and Vaccine Safety

Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR)

Medical Management Guidelines for Chemical exposures

Source: Kane Hall, Univ. of Washington –11/2001 PPT

Purpose: advises the Secretary and the departmenton appropriate actions to prepare for and respond topublic health emergencies, including acts of bioterrorism.

Secretary's Council on Public Health Preparedness DA Henderson -Chairman

Mission: The Office of Public Health Preparedness (OPHP) shalldirect the Department of Health and Human Services' efforts toprepare for, protect against, respond to, and recover from all actsof bioterrorism and other public health emergencies that affectthe civilian population; and shall serve as the focal point within HHS for these activities.

Office of the Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness

Jerome Hauer -Director

Office of Global Health Affairs

Mission: To promote the health of the world's population by Advancing the Department of Health and Human Services'global strategies and partnerships, thus serving the health of the people of the United States.

PH Emergency Preparedness and Response

URL: http://www.bt.cdc.gov/planning/index.asp

PH Emergency Preparation and Planning

Smallpox Preparedness and Response

Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Program (Centers for Disease Control)

Mission: ensure the rapid development of federal, state, and local capacity to address potential bioterrorism events. The program integrates planning and training to facilitate the development of corecapacities in the primary elements of public health preparedness, including surveillance, epidemiology, rapid laboratory diagnosis, emergency response, and communications systems.

Centers for Public Health Preparedness

URL: http://www.bt.cdc.gov/training/CPHPlocations.asp

Centers for Public Health Preparedness

A national system of Centers for Public Health Preparedness (CPHP) implemented to ensure frontline public health workershave the requisite skills and competencies to effectively respond to current and emerging health threats. The CPHPs are involved in four key areas:

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

develop competency-based public health practice curricula; technology-mediated learning (e-learning); certification and credentialing; applied research and evaluation.

Millions of clinical workers to get smallpox information packets

Mar 4, 2003 (CIDRAP News) – CDC announced its plan as part of an ongoing education effort program, information packets about smallpox is being mailed to 3.5M physicians and other healthcare workers.

MissionTo ensure public health preparedness andthe preparedness, security, safety, and qualityof the health care delivery system.

Objectives1. Provide the private sector with a single DHHS point of contact for innovative ideas that cut across agencies and departments. 2. Coordinate requests from individuals and firms seeking HHS review of their ideas. 3. Ensure that HHS responds systematically and consistently to these requests. 4. Report to the Secretary on the Council’s activities and actions resulting from them.

Council on Private Sector Initiatives (CPSI)

Local Centers for Public Health Preparedness

NACCHO, in collaboration with CDC, has been tasked withanalyzing the lessons learned from the local Centers duringthe project period, and disseminating these lessons and bestpractices to the broader public health community.

The Local Centers for Public Health Preparedness projectwas developed to create models for implementing informationtechnology and training in support of bioterrorismpreparedness and emergency response.

MissionThe Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies is an independent,non-profit organization of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg Schoolof Public Health and the School of Medicine. The Center worksto prevent the development and use of biological weapons, tocatalyze advances in science and governance that diminish the power of biological weapons as agents of mass lethality, and to lessen the human suffering that would result if prevention fails.

URL: http://www.hopkins-biodefense.org/

MissionThe mission of the Consortium is to advance the research, development, knowledge, and application of information technology for crisis management and emergency response among government agencies, academia and the private sector.

Multi-Sector Crisis Management Consortium (MSCMC)

The work of the Consortium is supported by the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Priority is given to support communication and collaboration among people from all sectors of society on the applications of information technology to meet the critical needs of crisis management.

The National Technology Grid

Crisis

What is a crisis?

Extreme events that cause significant disruption and put lives and property at risk - situations distinct from ‘business as usual.” Theseinclude civilian and judicial crises management, e.g., natural andman-made disasters including such threats as the use of weaponsof mass destruction by terrorists (nuclear and biomedical andchemical attacks).

Source: National Research Council’s 1999 Workshop on Information Technology Research for Crisis Management

Contact Information

Centers for Disease Control and PreventionNational Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)

Office of Research and Methodology3311 Toledo Rd., Rm 3218Hyattsville, Maryland 20782

JDG#@CDC.GOV 301.458.4236