BY MARK AMES

It was Staff Appreciation Week at AIHA, and I was looking forward to the celebratory breakfast. Instead, I found myself heading into Washington, D.C. to engage in a fascinating discussion about the United States’ preparedness for pandemics. The setting was a large conference room in the offices of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR), where I joined more than 30 other organizational representatives for the first-ever combined workshop of public and private partners to discuss supply chain issues related to the Strategic National Stockpile, or SNS.

RESPONDING TO PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCIES One would be forgiven for thinking that the SNS deals with some type of nuclear or petroleum issue, but it actually involves the United States’ ability to respond to public health emergencies such as suspected outbreaks of infectious diseases. These incidents thoroughly engage the training of IHs and often result in important lessons learned.  Speed and information are among the most crucial elements of emergency response; accordingly, we spent much of our time reviewing the existing protocols and brainstorming potential improvements. Some of the questions included: Which groups should be contacted first? Is it best for government entities to contact only a few trade associations, who can then relay messages to their members? Are larger blast emails more effective? Sometimes key agency staff need to speak with stakeholders by phone; what protocols do associations have in place to respond to these incidents? Does each organization have a point of contact? What happens if that POC is unavailable? Do the POCs understand that they might need to respond to an incident in the middle of the night or when they’re out on a golf course? We eventually settled on a three-pronged approach: a blast email will be sent to all partners containing a one- to two-page summary of the incident; ASPR will set up a call or webinar with all partners to share additional information and coordinate in real time; and actions will be taken based on the feedback received via email and phone or webinar, and response operations will continue. One of the key takeaways from these discussions is that each disease and incident is different, presenting unique challenges. Responses that are appropriate for one disease may not be appropriate for another. Appropriately tailored responses can mean the difference between life and death, sickness and health.