Business Preparedness

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) devoted 2 days last week to testing its response to a possible outbreak of pandemic influenza on American soil.

Business is all about competition. It's about building a better mousetrap and marketing that mousetrap more creatively and effectively than your competitor. But it is also about dependency on other businesses to ensure that you can make, sell, and service that mousetrap.

Because most people feel ambivalent about possible future pandemics, communicating effectively with them requires skillful balance on a wide range of communication 'seesaws.'

You may be tempted to minimize the importance of food-sector pandemic planning because it's not your business. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Several large, influential food companies and organizations contacted by Weekly Briefing had little or nothing to say about their pandemic preparedness plans.

(CIDRAP News) – An influenza pandemic as severe as the great flu of 1918 could cost the United States $683 billion and plunge the American economy into the second-deepest recession since World War II, a nonprofit health advocacy group warned today.

Most people think about possible future pandemics—when they think about them at all—with a good deal of ambivalence. To communicate with ambivalent people, you need to understand the 'risk communication seesaw.'

Weekly Briefing interviewed pandemic preparedness planners from two Fortune 500 companies to find out how they are using exercises and what they are learning. For both, scenarios changed as the exercise progressed. We present one here. Look for the second one in an upcoming article on designing, conducting, and evaluating tabletop exercises.