Hospital Disaster Preparedness in Los Angeles County

Hospital disaster preparedness in Los Angeles County.

BACKGROUND There are no standardized measures of hospital disaster preparedness or hospital "surge capacity." OBJECTIVES To characterize disaster preparedness among a cohort of hospitals in Los Angeles County, focusing on practice variation, plan characteristics, and surge capacity. METHODS This was a descriptive, cross-sectional survey study, followed by on-site verification. Forty-five 9-...

Hospital disaster preparedness in Switzerland.

STUDY OBJECTIVE Hospital preparedness is an essential component of any developed health care system. However, there is no national legislation in Switzerland. The objective of this inquiry was to establish the geographic distribution, availability and characteristics of hospital preparedness across Switzerland. METHODS A questionnaire regarding hospital preparedness in 2006 was addressed to a...

Averting disaster: a conversation with the Los Angeles County 'Health Czar'. Interview by John K. Iglehart.

Ambient Air Pollution and Autism in Los Angeles County, California

BACKGROUND The prevalence of autistic disorder (AD), a serious developmental condition, has risen dramatically over the past two decades, but high-quality population-based research addressing etiology is limited. OBJECTIVES We studied the influence of exposures to traffic-related air pollution during pregnancy on the development of autism using data from air monitoring stations and a land use...

The Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience Project — A Community-Level, Public Health Initiative to Build Community Disaster Resilience

Public health officials need evidence-based methods for improving community disaster resilience and strategies for measuring results. This methods paper describes how one public health department is addressing this problem. This paper provides a detailed description of the theoretical rationale, intervention design and novel evaluation of the Los Angeles County Community Disaster Resilience Pro...