The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

Abstract #48846

Kristine Gebbie, DrPH, RN¹, Marita K. Murrman, EdD², Kristine Qureshi, RN, MSN, CEN³, and Jacqueline Merrill, MPH, RN, C¹. (1) School of Nursing, Columbia University, Center for Health Policy, 630 West 168 Street, GB 250, New York City, NY 10032, 212 305-1794, kmg24@columbia.edu, (2) Division of Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, 600 West 168th St., 4th fl, New York, NY 10032, (3) Center for Public Health Preparedness, Columbia University, 722 W. 168th Street, New York, NY 10032

The mission of the Columbia University Center for Public Health Preparedness (the Center) is to serve as a resource and develop training programs for public health preparedness, with an emphasis on bioterrorism. An essential mechanism for fulfilling this mission is through the partnering process.

A partnership between the Center and the New York City Department of Health (NYC-DOH) was sought with the goal of developing a basic emergency preparedness training program.

The process began with a determination of the emergency preparedness learning needs of the NYC-DOH. To identify the needs, an enumeration of employees by job classification, consultation with senior management staff and focus group sessions were used. It was determined that all employees required a basic orientation to emergency preparedness. As the School Health Program nurses constituted the largest employee group in the department, this group was selected for the first training program. The Center and NYC-DOH staff jointly developed a competency based emergency preparedness curriculum which focused on the School Health nurses’ functional role in emergency response. Approximately 750 nurses received this training two weeks prior to the 9/11 World Trade Center event.

Preliminary data suggest that the training enhanced nurses’ ability to perform their emergency response functional roles. The success of the program has led to an expansion of the role of the public health nurse in the NYC-DOH emergency response plan.

Learning Objectives:

• 1.Describe three methods to determine learning needs of a workforce.
• 2.Define the term functional role.
• 3.Discuss the benefits of a partnering relationship between academia and a department of health for workforce development.

Keywords: Partnerships, Competency

Related Web page: www.mailman.hs.columbia.edu/dept/sph/CPHP/index.html

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.