OBJECTIVE The events of September 11, 2001, and the nation's recent experience with anthrax assaults made bioterrorism preparedness a national priority. Because primary care physicians are among the sentinel responders to bioterrorist attacks, we sought to determine family physicians' beliefs about their preparedness for such an attack. STUDY DESIGN In October 2001 we conducted a national sur...

This paper investigated the belief of the news of impending earthquake from any source in the context of the Cry Wolf hypothesis as well as the belief of the news of any other imminent disaster from any source. We were also interested in the correlation between preparedness, risk perception and antecedents. This explorative study consisted of interviews, literature and Internet reviews. Samplin...

Overall and antigenic region identity of 2009 pandemic H1N1 (pH1N1) proteins compared to representative recently circulating and vaccine strains of A/H1N1 and A/H3N2

Objectives: Since 9/11, Incident Command System (ICS) and Emergency Operations Center (EOC) are relatively new concepts to public health, which typically operates using less hierarchical and more collaborative approaches to organizing staff. This paper describes the 2009 H1N1 influenza outbreak in San Diego County to explore the use of ICS and EOC in public health emergency response. Methods: T...

OBJECTIVES Health care providers play an essential role in public health emergency preparedness and response. We conducted a 4-year randomized controlled trial to systematically compare the effectiveness of traditional and mobile communication strategies for sending time-sensitive public health messages to providers. METHODS Subjects (N=848) included providers who might be leveraged to assist...

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conclusions overall, the results derived from these studies indicated that hospital safety levels in most of the surveyed hospitals were moderate. although the situation in hospitals is not critical, there is a need to plan and take appropriate measures to improve the safety level of the hospitals. results hospital preparedness in disaster was evaluated in three dimensions: structural, non-stru...

Drought is a complex, slow-onset phenomenon that affects more people than any other natural hazard and results in serious economic, social, and environmental impacts. Although drought affects virtually all climatic regimes and has significant consequences in both developed and developing countries, its impacts are especially serious in developing countries where dryland agriculture predominates...

This survey in primary health-care centres in north Jordan aimed to assess health-care providers' perceptions of their knowledge, skills and preparedness for disaster management. A multistage random sample was used to recruit nurses and physicians from 57 health centres. A total of 207 participants completed the Arabic version of the Disaster Preparedness Evaluation Tool. Participants perceived...

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...