Building a Connection Towards E-Public Health: Individual Preparedness within a Local Community

Individual preparedness within a local public health community is essential to support governmental initiatives surrounding the Center for Disease Control (CDC), Department of Health and Human Services (DHSS), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The changing dimensions of local communities increase the need for individual preparedness of our healthrelated practitioners. Information communication technology (ICT) of low-richness medium for public health and community outreach practitioners is discussed as a means to initiate interoperable communications in these local communities for emergency response. We seek to answer: What ICT devices do local public health and community outreach practitioners need to be individually prepared as front-line responders? An assessment of front-line responder response characteristics are presented and reviewed to advance discussions surrounding the need for individual preparedness in a local community. Our assessment also compares the benefits of ham radio operations known for their longevity and reliability in crisis where communication protocols are established to modern ICT that are plug-and-play. The contribution of this research is to present a potential connection towards e-public health where health-related front-line responders could benefit.