141st APHA Annual Meeting and Exposition

Home Events & Meetings Annual Meeting Schedule & Program

Recorded Annual Meeting Presentations (RAMP) are now available for purchase.
Only $90 for presenters, $140 for registered attendees and $200 for non-attendees.

Online Program

295778
Public Health and Medical Response to the Boston Marathon Bombings from the Perspective of the Massachusetts Department of Public Health


Monday, November 4, 2013 : 8:30 a.m. - 8:48 a.m.

Mary E. Clark, JD, MPH, Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Boston, MA
     
The Boston Marathon annually attracts 20,000+ runners and hundreds of thousands of spectators along a 26.2 mile course, providing an opportunity to assess multi-disciplinary state and local preparedness capacity in the context of a planned mass casualty event. In 2013, the detonation of two improvised explosive devices near the finish line resulted in a very real test of the health and medical response and medical surge planning undertaken by hospitals in the Greater Boston Area. This presentation will describe the state health department role in pre-event planning, the immediate response and recovery period, and initial lessons learned.

Learning Areas:

Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Public health or related education

Learning Objectives:
Describe the public health and medical response to the Boston Marathon bombings. Describe the role of public health workers in preparedness for similar mass-casualty events.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am the Director of the Emergency Preparedness Bureau at the Massachusetts Department of Public Health. In that role, I oversee state and local emergency preparedness and response for the Department, and am the principal investigator for the PHEP and HPP Cooperative Agreements. I am also a member of the Executive Committee of the Directors of Public Health Preparedness for the Association of State and Territorial Health Officers (ASTHO).
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

Back to: 3005.0: Late Breaking Developments in Public Health