 |
 |
National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion
| ||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||
|
National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion |
||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||
|
Crisis preparedness is the responsibility of every school, community, and state. Preparedness involves planning how to respond when an emergency or disaster occurs and working to marshal the resources needed to respond efficiently and effectively. Schools and education agencies cannot prevent natural disasters or even many man-made crises, such as terrorist events. However, should an event or threat occur or be suspected, every staff member should know how to respond based on protocols, or community-based plans, established in advance in collaboration with public health and first responder agencies.
The basic components of most plans (i.e., crisis response team, communications, emergency organizational chart, operations plans, evacuation, shelter-in-place, transportation, emergency care, short- and long-term mental health care) apply whether an emergency is caused by terrorism, tornado, or school shooting. Some resources are listed below; a more comprehensive list can be found in the lists for crisis preparedness & response Publications and Links.
Local and state educational agencies and institutions of higher education are urged to have an emergency management plan. Resources are available to help schools, education agencies, and institutions of higher education develop such plans.
Schools have a key role to play in responding to crises and disasters. This involves providing emergency assistance and trying to reduce the likelihood of further damage during and immediately following a disaster.
Schools are uniquely positioned to provide normalization and security to children. Recovery includes engaging in short-term efforts to restore people to physical and mental health and vital systems to minimum operating conditions; it also includes long-term efforts to restore disaster areas to previous conditions or better.
| * |
Links to non-Federal organizations are provided solely as a service to our users. Links do not constitute an endorsement of any organization by CDC or the Federal Government, and none should be inferred. The CDC is not responsible for the content of the individual organization Web pages found at this link. |
|
Documents on this page are available in Portable Document Format (PDF). Learn more about viewing and printing these documents with Acrobat Reader. |
|
|
Healthy Youth Home |
Contact Us
Page last reviewed: October 28, 2008
Division of Adolescent
and School Health
|
|