CONTEXT During the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014-2015, close cooperation between the curative sector and the public health sector in the Netherlands was necessary for timely identification, referral, and investigation of patients with suspected Ebola virus disease (EVD). OBJECTIVE In this study, we evaluated experiences in preparedness among stakeholders of both curative and public he...

BACKGROUND The severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) crisis of 2003 provided a new urgency in China in terms of preparing public health staff to respond effectively to public health emergencies. Although the Chinese Government has already carried out a series of emergency education and training programmes to improve public health staff's capability of emergency preparedness, it remains uncle...

The recent increased threat of terrorism, coupled with the ever-present dangers posed by natural disasters and public health emergencies, clearly support the need to incorporate bioterrorism preparedness and emergency response material into the curricula of every health professions school in the nation. A main barrier to health care preparedness in this country is a lack of coordination across ...

Legal preparedness has gained recognition as a critical component of comprehensive public health preparedness for public health emergencies triggered by infectious disease outbreaks, natural disasters, chemical and radiologic disasters, terrorism and other causes. Public health practitioners and their colleagues in other disciplines can prepare for and respond to such an event effectively only ...

assessing the preparedness rate againest earthquake risk in hospitals affiliated to urmia university of medical sciences 2011     hekmatkhah a [1] , rahimi h [2] , kamali aghdam m [3] , taghavi shahri sm [4] , sadeghifar j [5] , hamouzadeh p [6] *     received: 22 nov, 2011 accepted: 15 jan, 2012     abstract   background & aims : the necessity for providing appropriate services in hospitals du...

OBJECTIVES Each of the nuclear power plants in the US is encircled by an Emergency Planning Zone (EPZ). Within each EPZ, government officials, utility professionals, emergency managers, and public health practitioners collectively conduct extensive planning, exercises, and outreach to better protect their communities in the event of a nuclear accident. Our objective was to conduct a cross-secti...

INTRODUCTION The coordination and integration of mental health agencies' plans into disaster responses is a critical step for ensuring effective response to all-hazard emergencies. PROBLEM In order to remedy the current lack of integration of mental health into emergency preparedness training, researchers must assess mental health emergency preparedness training needs. To date, no recognized ...

Many public health departments seek to improve their capability to respond to large-scale events such as an influenza pandemic. Quality improvement (QI), a structured approach to improving performance, has not been widely applied in public health. We developed and tested a pilot QI collaborative to explore whether QI could help public health departments improve their pandemic preparedness. We d...

Emergency preparedness is an expectation of public health organizations and an expectation of individual public health practitioners. Organizational performance standards for public health agencies have been developed during the last several years, providing a foundation for the development of competency statements to guide individual practice in public health program areas, like emergency resp...

Shoukat H. Qari, DVM, PhD David M. Abramson, PhD, MPH Jane A. Kushma, PhD Paul K. Halverson, DrPH, FACHE In today’s environment of an increased need to demonstrate the value of the federal investment in public health preparedness and response (PHPR), it is encouraging to see the results of the research conducted by the Preparedness and Emergency Response Research Centers (PERRCs), which were fu...