Superstorm Sandy: Lessons for Optimizing Limited Training Resources for Local Impact.

Professional training development, whether for a classroom, work environment, or other setting, typically follows a validated instructional design model that includes an assessment of learner needs before the development of a training. This foundational principle is integrated into federal guidance documents for emergency preparedness training. That said, local preparedness resources are sometimes in misalignment with this principle. Funding tends to favor nationally defined priorities as a proxy for the assessment of local needs. For example, the guidance for the 2015 Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) and Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP) funding application requires “justification” that “all training is purposefully designed to close operational gaps and sustain jurisdictionally required preparedness competencies.” Beyond such vague references, there are no robust training needs assessment requirements. Additionally, many of the recommended and freely available preparedness trainings for public health personnel are not specific to public health and are instead based on a nationallevel view of preparedness needs that may not fully accommodate local requirements. During the response to Superstorm Sandy, local public health departments had to carry out disaster response tasks based in part on federally funded trainings developed over years of investment in public health preparedness. To understand this further, we analyzed field data collected as part of a research study on the public health system response to Superstorm Sandy, based on key informant interviews and focus group discussions with lower New York State county health officials and first responders.