Public Health Practices

Resource and equipment shortages are one of the largest obstacles hospitals and clinics face to providing patient care during a widespread public health emergency. The Minnesota Department of Health developed a list of strategies and recommendations for extending use of supplies when healthcare resources are scarce.

A multistate collaboration of medical and mortuary response teams partnered with the American Samoa government to fill critical infrastructure gaps after a tsunami struck the island in 2009. The partners identified five major lessons learned during their experience.

The University of Michigan began planning for an influenza pandemic 3 to 4 years ago. At the time, planners noticed that there was a lack of clear guidelines about the storage and use of droplet protection, such as masks, respirators, and gowns, said Robert Winfield, MD, Director of the University Health Service and Chief Health Officer of the University of Michigan. The University of Michigan Health System hospital had begun to stockpile masks and respirators.

The Virginia Department of Health created a system that enables the state to track licensure verification, communication with volunteers, and deployment during an emergency.

Five articles from the Task Force for Mass Critical Care address difficult issues around patient triage and resource allocation that may need to be implemented during an influenza pandemic.

In September 2006, The Providence Center for Health Care Ethics and The Hastings Center convened a meeting of public health officials, experts on public health and clinical ethics, and clinicians. The group discussed the challenges of building pandemic plans on an ethically sound framework, and subsequently developed a backgrounder to highlight ethical issues and suggestions.

A variety of educational materials introduce the benefits of lateral thinking/six hats techniques and apply this approach to collaborative planning for multi-agency pandemic influenza projects. The materials were developed by the Tarrant County, Texas, Advanced Practice Sessions, with funding from NACCHO and the CDC.