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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Charles K.T. Ishikawa, MSPH, Advanced Practice Center for Emergency Preparedness, Cambridge Public Health Department, 119 Windsor Street, Cambridge, MA 02139, 6176653759, cishikawa@challiance.org and Daniel Church, MPH, Massachusetts Department of Public Health, 305 South Street, 5th floor, Jamaica Plain, MA 02130.

Developing a public health infrastructure ready to respond to all hazards 24 hours a day and 7 days a week (24/7), requires partnerships and collaborations among emergency response stakeholders at all levels of government. As in all partnerships, communication is critical to success. Federal and state public health officials have enhanced the public health system to expeditiously communicate threat information acquired through active and passive surveillance networks 24/7 (e.g., Health and Homeland Alert Network). Yet, this ability to communicate information to public health responders at the local level is not, in and of itself sufficient to overcome resource limitations and ensure a 24/7 public health response capacity. This presentation will discuss developing 24/7 response capacity in Massachusetts public health emergency planning Region 4b. Through regionalization, an asset-based approach to meeting the need for after-hours communication between state and local health authorities created the Local Emergency Notification System (LENS). LENS features a regional on-call staffer who is the initial after-hours point of contact for the state when there is an infectious disease emergency in a Region 4b community. As the initial point of contact, LENS on-call staffers are positioned to provide logistical, planning, and/or communication support to LPHAs mobilizing an after hours response. During the first four months of the system's inception, all LPHAs in Region 4b participated in an after hours drill. LPHAs were able to respond to the state health department within 44-52 minutes of an emergency notification.

Learning Objectives: At the end of the presentation, participants will be able to

• Describe the challenges and barriers to establishing 24/7 public health coverage for under-resourced local public health authorities.
• Identify opportunities that emerge from regionalization that maybe leveraged in overcoming resource and relationship barriers.
• Critique regionalization as a solution to the challenge of establishing 24/7 public health coverage.

Keywords: Public Health Infrastructure, Communication

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered