Table 3.

Factors that facilitate U.S. local health department workers’ participation in an infectious disease response, April 2015 to January 2016

Factors that facilitate participation in an infectious disease response	Representative Quotations
Availability of vaccinations and personal protective equipment	“Yeah, one of the things that we’ve done with some of our regional dollars and assets and local dollars is try to create our own cache of prophylaxis for our staff and for their families…. If they’re still worried about their family becoming sick, they’re not going to be 100 percent focused on what we’re asking them to do.” (Director-1). “[W]e’re going over how would we give the medication first to our health department responders and to any other people who work at the PODs and whatnot, to their families, so that they can come in and so they don’t have to worry so much about getting that for their family. Because we understand, and we really do, everybody here completely understands the whole family thing.” (Preparedness-6).
Flexible work schedule and childcare arrangements	“See, I feel like I could do my job from home, so if for some reason I wasn’t able to make it in for whatever reason, whatever the emergency is, I really feel like I could – well, except if we didn’t have electricity. That would be hard.” (Non-preparedness-3) “But one thing we did consider – well, and we have considered with our like our POD planning for, you know, bioterrorism, is if someone was asked to work, then like providing daycare at the place where they were going to be working or open it up so we had some room for their family members there, not necessarily during their whole shift, but so that they knew they were safe.” (Preparedness-10)
Information sharing via local health department trainings	“I do think that they would look to me to say, ‘What are my risks, and what do we need for PPE? What do I need to know for protection?’ And then as long as I think their questions were answered, they would be comfortable responding.” (Director-7) “Yeah, I think it’s just always ensuring that they have the right either prophylaxis or PPE or training to deal with it and just general knowledge of the disease….” (Preparedness-1)
Perceived commitments to one’s job and community	“And I just told them if I’m needed I’ll be here. I’ll worry about the details later. And that’s how I feel about my job. I’m passionate about the work that I do. And one of the things that I love about the job is being able to help people.” (Preparedness-5) “I would say first tier it’s sort of what is your professional obligation, which is what’s in line with your job, reasonable, and clearly defined, and then there is sort of the community obligation and wanting to help and do what’s right for the community.” (Non-preparedness-8).