What makes a community ready to respond to the ever-expanding number and complexity of human-caused and natural disasters posing public health risks? Community preparedness is complex and involves multiple stakeholders and crosscutting sectors such as state and local governments; public health departments and agencies; law enforcement, fire, and rescue organizations; social service and faith-based organizations; and ordinary citizens from varied communities. How does community preparedness work? Community preparedness works when organizational and individual-level stakeholders collaborate.
Collaboration was key to success in Cold War programs that promoted community preparedness (http://bit.ly/33965zM). The Federal Civil Defense Agency, organized by President Harry Truman in 1951, collaborated with state and local governments to prepare US families and communities for nuclear bomb threats (http://bit.ly/33965zM). Shelter-building programs, warning systems, stockpiled supplies, and education campaigns targeting adults and schoolchildren were implemented. Millions of literature pamphlets containing safety and survival information were developed, printed, and distributed (http://bit.ly/33965zM).
As the tensions of the Cold War waned with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1991 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, concern for peacetime natural disaster preparation became more prominent in public policy debates (http://bit.ly/33965zM). Natural disasters including earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes did not constitute a central threat facing the nation, and, to some extent, large-scale community preparedness faded in the national mindset. However, that changed with the horrific events of September 11, 2001 (http://bit.ly/33965zM).
The response mounted during the aftermath of 9/11 revealed that states required expertise and resources for improved capacity for public health preparedness. In 2002, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) initiated a federal program to strengthen 62 US jurisdictions to plan and prepare for public health emergencies, providing resources, guidance, technical assistance, and evaluation support (http://bit.ly/2KesXqs). The Public Health Emergency Preparedness program, aimed at advancing state, territorial, and local preparedness and response is ongoing in 2019. CDC issued 15 public health emergency response capability standards in 2011, updated in 2018, to assist health department planning efforts organized around six overarching domains of preparedness: community resilience, incident management, information management, countermeasures and mitigation, surge management, and biosurveillance. The capability standards provide guidance for building preparedness and response infrastructure that are adaptable for local requirements, priorities, organizational structures, and geographically based risks (http://bit.ly/2KesXqs).
As a component of the community resilience domain, community preparedness is defined as the ability of communities to prepare for, withstand, and recover from public health incidents in the short and long term. To build community resilience, state, local, tribal, and territorial stakeholders are encouraged to galvanize support for preparedness among diverse constituencies and work together to determine local health risks, strengthen partnerships, share information, and coordinate trainings. For more than 15 years, CDC has provided resources and tools for building and sustaining a dynamic infrastructure for public health emergency preparedness (http://bit.ly/2KesXqs).
This perspective is a shift away from past anticipation of singular national threats, and reflects a deep regard for the diversity and complexity of the US population and comprehension of the expanding forms of disasters, which require localized actions, emphasizing state, local, tribal, and territorial health departments’ critical role (http://bit.ly/2KesXqs).
6 Years Ago
Community Resilience and a Whole Community Approach
[There are] essential social factors that contribute to community resilience. Building truly resilient communities will require significantly strengthening the ways that individuals in communities relate to one another . . . . This method will require a whole community approach, with government, private, and nonprofit sectors working together to promote the intelligent use of social media and existing technologies, to support informal social networks, to incorporate civic- and faith-based organizations into disaster plans, and to reform relationships within the private sector. . . . Time and again, local organizations and networks have proven far more adaptable and responsive than outside agencies in responding to disasters.
From AJPH, July 2013, p. 1159
7 Years Ago
Social Justice in Pandemic Preparedness
Pandemic influenza planning in the United States and most of the world violates the demands of social justice . . . and fails to move beyond lament to practical planning geared toward alleviating access barriers. A substantive social justice approach should inform pandemic planning. Planners should partner with at-risk communities to ensure that their needs are met. Those who will suffer disparate effects of pandemics or other public health disasters should receive preference in the distribution or rationing of resources, so that they may be protected from further harm.
From AJPH, April 2012, p. 590
Biography
