PUBLIC HEALTH PREPAREDNESS: MOBILIZING STATE BY STATE
Section 2: Snapshots of Public Health Preparedness in States and Directly Funded Localities:West Virginia
Related Website: West Virginia Department of Public Health
West Virginia Responds to Hurricane Katrina – Operation Safe Haven
Capability of unaffected states enables strong support for national incidents.
In September 2005, the Governor of West Virginia requested that the state receive, temporarily house, and support Hurricane Katrina evacuees. Within 24 hours, state agencies and their partners developed and implemented a plan for the anticipated arrival of the evacuees. The state received approximately 300 Hurricane Katrina evacuees from New Orleans at the Charleston, West Virginia airport, where registration, clothing, food, and initial medical screening and treatment were provided. Evacuees then were moved to an Army National Guard base as part of Operation Safe Haven, where they were housed, linked to both short- and long-term service needs, and reconnected with friends and family. This month-long operation was managed by the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (WVDHHR).
Operation Safe Haven was a multi-agency operation that coordinated activities through the National Incident Management System. The WVDHHR provided command and control for the overall operation in addition to coordinating medical care, providing behavioral health services, public health services, social services, case management, and community communications. The American Red Cross coordinated the provision of food and staffed housing units. The National Guard provided facility support, transportation, staff support, and security. Universities and the private sector generously provided resources otherwise not available to support the operation. Coordination and partnership among state agencies, private sector agencies, and the volunteer community demonstrated that preparedness in unaffected states enables rapid response to incidents in neighboring states and nationwide.
Snapshot of Public Health Preparedness
Below are activities conducted byWest Virginia in the area of public health preparedness. They support CDC preparedness goals in the areas of detection and reporting, control, and improvement; crosscutting activities help prepare for all stages of an event. These data are not comprehensive and do not cover all preparedness activities.
Disease Detection and Investigation
The sooner public health professionals can detect diseases or other health threats and investigate their causes and effects in the community, the more quickly they can minimize population exposure.
Category of Activities | Specific Activity | Response |
---|---|---|
Detect & Report | Could receive and investigate urgent disease reports 24/7/3651 | Yes |
|
Telephone | |
Linked state and local health personnel to share information about disease outbreaks across state lines (through the CDC Epi-X system)3 | Yes | |
Conducted year-round surveillance for seasonal influenza4 | Yes | |
* Telephone, fax, and electronic reporting are all viable options for urgent disease reporting, as long as the public health department has someone assigned to receive the reports 24/7/365. 1 CDC, DSLR; 2005 2 CDC, DSLR; 2006 3 CDC, Epi-X; 2007 4 HHS, OIG; 2007 |
Public Health Laboratories
Public health laboratories test and confirm agents that can threaten health. For example, advanced DNA “fingerprinting” techniques and subsequent reporting to the CDC database (PulseNet) are critical to recognize nationwide outbreaks from bacteria that can cause severe illness, such as E. coli O157:H7 and Listeria monocytogenes.
Category of Activities | Specific Activity | Response |
---|---|---|
Detect & Report | Number ofWest Virginia laboratories in the Laboratory Response Network1 | 1 |
Rapidly identified E. coli O157:H7 using advanced DNA “fingerprinting” techniques (PFGE):2 | ||
|
none | |
|
N/A | |
Rapidly identified Listeria monocytogenes using advanced DNA “fingerprinting” techniques (PFGE):2 | ||
|
none |
|
|
N/A | |
Had a laboratory information management system that could create, send, and receive messages3 (8/05 – 8/06) | Yes | |
|
Yes | |
Had a rapid method to send urgent messages to frontline laboratories that perform initial screening of clinical specimens3 (8/05 – 8/06) | Yes | |
Crosscutting | Conducted bioterrorism exercise that met CDC criteria4 (8/05 – 8/06) | No |
Conducted exercise to test chemical readiness that met CDC criteria4 (8/05 – 8/06) | Yes | |
1 CDC, DBPR; 2007 2 CDC, DSLR; 2007 3 APHL, Public Health Laboratory Issues in Brief: Bioterrorism Capacity; May 2007 4 CDC, DSLR; 2006 |
||
Response
Planning provides a framework for how a public health department will respond during an emergency. The plans can be tested through external reviews, exercises, and real events. After-action reports assess what worked well during an exercise or real event and how the department can improve.
Category of Activities | Specific Activity | Response |
---|---|---|
Control | Developed a public health response plan, including pandemic influenza response, crisis and emergency risk communication, and Strategic National Stockpile (SNS)1, 2 | Yes |
Nebraska SNS plan reviewed by CDC2 | Yes | |
|
61 | |
Number ofWest Virginia cities in the Cities Readiness Initiative3 | 1 | |
Crosscutting | Developed roles and responsibilities for a multi-jurisdictional response (ICS) with:1 (8/05 – 8/06) | |
|
Yes | |
|
Yes | |
|
No | |
Public health department staff participated in training to support cooperative agreement activities4 | Yes | |
Public health laboratories conducted training for first responders5 (8/05 – 8/06) | Yes | |
Activated public health emergency operations center as part of a drill, exercise, or real event*†6 (partial year, 9/06 – 2/07) | No | |
Conducted a drill or exercise for key response partners to test communications when power and land lines were unavailable†6 (partial year, 9/06 – 2/07) | No | |
Improve | Finalized at least one after-action report with an improvement plan following an exercise or real event†6 (partial year, 9/06 – 2/07) | Yes |
* Activation means rapidly staffing all eight core ICS functional roles in the public health emergency operations center with one person per position. This capability is critical to maintain in case of large-scale or complex incidents, even though not every incident requires full staffing of the ICS. † States were expected to perform these activities from 9/1/2006 to 8/30/2007. These data represent results from the first half of this period only. 1 CDC, DSLR; 2006 2 CDC, DSNS; 2007 3 CDC, DSNS CRI; 2007 4 CDC, DSLR; 1999-2005 5 APHL, Chemical Terrorism Preparedness; May 2007 6 CDC, DSLR; 2007 |
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