After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, increased funding was provided to federal, state, and local health departments to improve their capacities for terrorism preparedness and emergency response. To evaluate the effect of this funding and to identify priority program areas in Kansas, the Kansas Association of Local Health Departments (KALHD) contracted with the Kansas Health Instit...

journal of law, medicine & ethics Introduction Among the many components of legal preparedness for public health emergencies is the assurance that the public health workforce and its private sector partners are competent to use the law to facilitate the performance of essential public health services and functions.1 This is a significant challenge. Multiple categories of emergencies, stemming f...

BACKGROUND Preparedness of health care professionals for emergency situations is quite indispensable in quality health care; yet, information barely exists on the preparedness of health care professionals for emergency cases in health facilities in Ghana. This study sought to assess the preparedness of health professionals in preventing maternal mortality cases at a public health facility in Gh...

sir, the 2014 outbreak of ebola virus disease has beendeclared as an international public health emergencyand since inception, the disease has accounted for almost27,550 cases and 11,235 associated deaths till the endof june 2015 in the affected countries.[1] a wide rangeof factors like lack of preparedness,[2] weak public healthsystem,[3] ineffective diagnostic and case managementservices,[4] ...

This product is part of the RAND Health working paper series. RAND working papers are intended to share researchers' latest findings and to solicit additional peer review. This paper has been peer reviewed but not edited. Unless otherwise indicated, working papers can be quoted and cited without permission of the author, provided the source is clearly referred to as a working paper. RAND's publ...

(2) In this directive: (a) The term ‘‘biosurveillance’’ means the process of active data-gathering with appropriate analysis and interpretation of biosphere data that might relate to disease activity and threats to human or animal health— whether infectious, toxic, metabolic, or otherwise, and regardless of intentional or natural origin—in order to achieve early warning of health threats, early...

Facing limited time and budgetary resources, state and local health departments need a practical, competency-based training approach to meet the all-hazards readiness requirements of their employees. The Road Map to Preparedness is a training tool designed to assist health departments in providing comprehensive, agency-tailored readiness instruction to their employees. This tool uses an incenti...