As part of our total public health commitment, we offer the following programs and services nationwide:
As part of our total public health commitment, we offer the following programs and services nationwide:
Pandemic Influenza Planning and Preparedness
Public Health Information Management System
Public Health Emergency Operations Center
Volunteer Management System
Pandemic Influenza Planning and Preparedness – The goal of this program is to provide a foundation for pandemic preparedness, response and the recovery process.
The program is comprehensive and strategically focused on providing education, training and exercises for the following:- Prevent human illnesses by increasing the use and development of interventions known to reduce the transmission of Pandemic Influenza.
- Detect and Report by decreasing the time needed to classify Influenza-like-Illness (ILI) as Pandemic, decrease the time needed to detect and report influenza in samples provided for testing, and improve the timeliness and accuracy of communications regarding Pandemic Influenza threats to the public’s health.
- Investigate by decreasing the time to identify causes, risk factors, and appropriate interventions for those affected by the Pandemic Influenza threat.
- Control by decreasing time needed to provide countermeasures and health guidance to those affected by the Pandemic Influenza threat.
- Recover by decreasing time to restore health services and environmental safety to pre-event levels and increase long term follow-up provided to those affected.
- Improve by decreasing the time needed to implement recommendations from after-action reports following threats to the public’s health.
- Control, Recover and Improve through coordination with partners and stakeholders by developing a multidiscipline response to the outbreak, implementing the response, evaluating the success of the planning and response, developing corrective action plans, revising the planning and implementation as necessary, and reevaluating.
- Lines of authority and communication between all personnel
- Alternative care facility selection, staffing and operation with patient flow diagrams
- Plans for managing emergency treatment of non-contaminated patients
- Decontamination procedures and designation of decontamination areas
- Supplies and equipment needs for pandemic disease response
- Medical management of pandemic disease response
- Medical management of mass casualty events
- Medical management of biological casualties
- Medical management of chemical casualties
- And much more!
- Orientation to emergency preparedness
- Crisis communication
- Incident command
- Points of dispensing for mass prophylaxis (vaccine, antibiotics)
- Specific training based on job roles and responsibilities
- Mass injury and casualty incidents
- Radio-telephone procedures and operation of local radios
In addition, all of our exercise programs are governed by the Homeland Security Exercise Evaluation Program’s mandated practices for exercise program management, design, development, conduct, evaluation, and improvement planning.
Public Health Information Management System (PHIMS) – This is an internet based system that was designed by Public Health Emergency Managers to provide the functionality needed for public health professionals to perform their normal jobs in the event of a public health incident while functioning within the Public Health Incident Command System.
PHIMS will allow your staff to manage and respond to any situation using the professional skills for which they have been trained. It provides an intuitive interface which leads them through the critical tasks needed to manage effectively every phase of an event.
This solution features integrated tools that promote collaboration between public health and emergency managers. The tools include:- Procedural checklists that are dynamic and interactive
- Authorized and immediate sharing of incident information as it occurs
- Integrated resource information management
- Organized contact information management
- Volunteer information management
- Records information management (financial and administrative data)
- Training information management
- Record archiving and automatic report preparation
While the job descriptions and tasks will look familiar, the system is NIMS compliant in all aspects. The PHIMS is hosted on the Internet and on the agencies’ own servers (if desired) as backup, in the event of a temporary loss of internet service.
Public Health Emergency Operations Center (PHEOC) – is the central processing unit that receives, processes and communicates vital action information both internally and externally to all activated and affected stakeholders within the local, state and federal response community.
The PHEOC Training Program has been designed to train the PHEOC staff starting with the individual functions of the command and general staff positions. An example of these positions includes, but are not limited to the following:- Public Health Officer
- Communications Officer
- Emergency Coordinator
- Emergency Operations Center Duty Officer
- Medical Services Officer
- Surveillance Officer
- Environmental Health Officer
- Emergency Medical Services Officer
- Administration Officer
- Logistics Officer
- Public Information Officer
- Safety Officer
- Regional Field Representative
In a PHEOC, actions taken in a specific functional area inherently impact all other functional areas. Therefore, each functional area must work in conjunction with all others and focus individual efforts together to work as a team. Public health EOC representatives are trained on PHEOC functions followed by instruction blocks that include actions involved within each specific function. For example, an action under the PHEOC function of “resource management” may be that a particular medication or type of medical supplies is needed at a specific temporary field clinic. When the request comes in, the action would impact those functional areas that are responsible for medical services, transportation and resources, administration and communications. Other functional areas will need to be aware of and monitor how that action may impact their area specifically.
This system and training is in compliance with:- The National Incident Management System
- The National Response Framework
- Emergency System for Advance Registration of Volunteer Healthcare Personnel (ESAR-VHP)
- Public Health Emergency Response Guide for State, Local and Tribal Public Health Directors
- Increased community emergency response capacity
- Facilitate communication, coordination and collaboration between volunteer services with other community volunteer programs
- Provide a venue for volunteers to train and contribute to the resolution of problems and needs throughout the year
- Recruit and mange volunteers during day-to-day operations AND disaster response
- Provide volunteers with an online orientation and information about their responsibilities
The VMS is a user friendly tool for processing, managing and developing volunteers before, during and after disasters. For more information please click on the VMS Download Link to obtain a VMS Brochure.