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Elena Savoia, MD, Jamie Morano, MD, David Cote, MD, Sanjay Rampal, MD, Diego Villa, MD, and Marcia A. Testa, MPH, PhD. Biostatistics, Harvard School of Public Health, 642 Chestnuthill Avenue, Brookline, MA 02445, 857-222-7581, esavoia@hsph.harvard.edu
Public health preparedness involves building on existing public health infrastructures to strengthen and expand preparedness planning and readiness assessment. As all preparedness systems must be organized prior to the occurrence of an emergency event, a new dilemma arises: how can public health preparedness be evaluated, and how can such assessment be expressed in quantitative terms? Using a survey that assessed the preparedness of cities and towns across a statewide system, we developed methods to quantitatively measure the diverse aspects of public health preparedness. A systematic review of the literature was initially conducted to conceptualize the construct of “Emergency Preparedness” into seven components: planning and resource allocation, communication, coordination, surveillance, education, risk-vulnerability and needs assessment. We determined that the survey could adequately capture most of these components. We outline an evaluation plan for testing reliability and validity of these scales. We propose our measurement and analysis techniques for a new evaluative scale measuring “overall communication ability”, one of the domains of the construct of "connectivity". We report on methods for testing the dimensionality and reliability of the scales and demonstrate sensitivity by comparing the different regions within the state using simulated data. Conclusions: In order to evaluate the effectiveness of educational programs designed to improve public health preparedness, quantitative scales must be developed that are reliable, valid and sensitive with respect to the most salient aspects of emergency preparedness.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Evaluation, Bioterrorism
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.