If you are interested in tracking health alerts from around the world, check out the HEALTHmap from the Children’s Hospital Informatics Program at Harvard.

Here’s a link to the pdf version of the March 30, 2007 issue of Inside UVA.  On the right hand column of the front page is a nice article about pandemic planning at the University of Virginia.

Here’s a link to a regional pandemic flu conference that was held last year at the Harborview Medical Center, Seattle, Washington.

 Description:

This three-part talk addresses how Harborview Medical Center is working together with the hospitals in Seattle, King County, and King County Public Health to create an emergency health care coalition - of hospitals, pandemic flu planning and emergency preparedness, and the biology of pandemic influenza - and what we have learned from it in the past.

Speaker(s):
Johnese Spisso, chief operating officer, Harborview Medical Center

Chris Martin, administrative director, Emergency Services, Harborview Medical Center

Timothy Dellit, MD, assistant professor of medicine, Medical Director, Antibiotic Management Program, Harborview Medical Center

Runtime:00:54:44

The VHA Foundation has made available a nice webcast on disaster planning, which was presented in November 2006. It’s free to view, however, you do need to register and use Internet Explorer as your browser.

CIDRAP is out of the University of Minnesota with a mission to “prevent illness and death from infectious diseases through epidemiologic research and the rapid translation of scientific information into real-world practical applications and solutions.”  It’s a great site for finding pandemic influenza information.

Click here for a link to the RAND Pandemic Influenza Tabletop Exercise Template. It is customizable, so you can use it to see what a possible pandemic situation would like like for your area.

If you look through the latest pandemic preparedness report from the CDC (link to report in posting below), you’ll see that the new pandemic warning system is in categories, similar to hurricane warnings.  To read about the new warning system, click here for an article in today’s San Francisco Chronicle.

Yesterday the CDC released the latest report on planning for a pandemic. The 108- page report is filled with possible scenarios as well as recommendations for businesses, schools and families for ways in which they can prepare for and hopefully, mitigate the effects of a pandemic. To view the entire report, click on the link below

Interim Pre-Pandemic Planning Guidance: Community Strategy for Pandemic Influenza Mitigation in the United States

If you are registered with the online version of the New York Times (nytimes.com), check out this 8-minute video report on the avian flu in Indonesia.

Here’s a podcast that features Lilian Peake of the Thomas Jefferson Health District and Dr. James Turner of the University of Virginia Student Health Department giving an update of area efforts in pandemic preparedness.