CPHD Past Projects
Bioterrorism Training and Curriculum Development Program
Core Competencies Project
Disaster and Emergency Preparedness for Head Start Programs
El Niņo Study
Fatality Model for Building Historical Earthquake Experience
Data
Hazard Risk Assessment Instrument (HRAI)
Modeling Injuries and Fatalities in Non-Ductile Concrete
Frame Buildings
Pre-Event Message Development
Seattle Project
Taiwan ProjectTraining Needs Assessment
TriNet SCAN Study
US/Japan Project
Bioterrorism Training and Curriculum Development Program
With funding from the Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS) Health Services and Resources Administration, CPHD designed a bioterrorism curriculum that can be adapted and implemented to educate future health professionals. This project integrates the Center’s experience and expertise in emergency public health issues with that of educators in the schools of medicine, nursing, dentistry, and pre-hospital care. This group collaborated to develop a standardized curriculum to be implemented in each of the respective schools.
The First Edition of this course, Interdisciplinary Response to Infectious Disease Emergencies, is available on DVD. Click here if you are interested in receiving a copy of the DVD, which will be mailed to the address you provide.
The Center conducted a Delphi survey to identify measurement criteria for the Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals published in 2001 by the Council on Linkages. This project focused on identifying measures for those core professional competencies that are critical to bioterrorism response. A Modified Delphi Process with three rounds was utilized to obtain consensus on the best knowledge and skill set items that can measure competency. The competency measurement criteria assess individual capabilities rather than institutional capacity.
Disaster and Emergency Preparedness for Head Start Programs
With support from the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies and collaboration with the UCLA Anderson School of Management, CPHD developed a comprehensive Head Start Disaster Preparedness Workbook to assist Head Start programs prepare for and respond to disasters and other emergencies. During the first year of the project, numerous assessment activities were undertaken to obtain information directly from Head Start personnel regarding their disaster preparedness and planning needs. The results of these assessments were then used as the basis for creating a workbook designed to guide Head Start programs through the development and implementation of a comprehensive disaster plan. The workbook is disseminated to Head Start programs throughout the United States via the Center’s website. Future plans include possible translation of the workbook into Spanish.
The Center received funding from the National Science Foundation to study the community response to the El Niņo event in the Los Angeles area. A primary objective of this study was to examine the impact of a large amount of pre-El Niņo media coverage on the preparedness level of community members in Los Angeles County.
Fatality Model for Building Historical Earthquake Experience Data
The Center received funding from NSF through the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER). This project was designed to create a mathematical model of fatalities in buildings as a function of local or global structural collapse and of structure type using the Van Nuys testbed. These models will be used to identify potential changes in building practices or search and rescue practices following earthquakes.
Hazard Risk Assessment Instrument (HRAI)
The Hazard Risk Assessment Instrument was developed by the Center through CDC funding and in collaboration with one of our local public health departments. The instrument provides guidance for state and local public health agencies to facilitate the process of conducting a hazard vulnerability analysis. HRAI utilizes a standardized emergency management approach to identifying locally relevant hazards, assessing the probability of occurrence, and quantifying the potential impacts of maximum credible events. The instrument varies from most emergency management tools by specifically identifying impacts that are relevant to public health.
Modeling Injuries and Fatalities in Non-Ductile Concrete Frame Buildings
The Center received funding from NSF through the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER). Researchers created a mathematical model of fatalities in buildings as a function of local or global structural collapse and of structure type using the Van Nuys testbed. These models will be used to identify potential changes in building practices or search and rescue practices following earthquakes. This project will further develop the casualty modeling for the decision-variable component of the performance-based engineering model, which will provide engineers with information on the decision-variable which is first and foremost in the minds of building stakeholders, deaths, and injuries.
CPHD collaborated with the UCLA Health and Media Research Group, who was funded by CDC through a Cooperative Agreement with the Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH), to create messages that will be distributed to the public in the event of a terrorist attack. This project teamed UCLA with schools of public health in Oklahoma, Alabama, and Missouri to generate messages for dispersal before, during, and after terrorist attacks.
Given the real potential of terrorist threats and the fact that a large segment of the population may be dealing with these threats for the first time, it is imperative that clear, consistent, and action-based messages are created. The first task included determining what the public needs to know, and then ascertain, through focus groups and interviews, what the public wants to know. These two elements were combined to design appropriate messages.
The Center received funding from the National Science Foundation to collect data on injuries and related building damage from the M6.8 Nisqually earthquake in the Seattle, Washington area, which occurred in February 2001. Data was collected from hospitals with emergency departments in the three counties that were most affected by the earthquake: King, Pierce, and Thurston. The data collected from this study will be used to refine casualty estimation models for urban earthquakes, and will be an important addition to the data collected from the Center's other earthquake projects.
The Center received funding from the National Science Foundation to gather injury and building damage data from the 1999 earthquakes in Colombia, Turkey, and Taiwan. In order to refine casualty estimation models, data points from a number of earthquakes are needed. The principal investigators collaborated with researchers in each of these three countries to identify available data on injuries, fatalities, and building damage that can be associated through geographic indicators (i.e., addresses). These data will be classified using the classification scheme developed under the US/Japan collaborative project and used to improve casualty estimation models.
The Center received funding from the California State Department of Health Services and the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services to evaluate the training needs of the public health workforce related to emergency preparedness and bioterrorism. CPHD conducted a competency-based training needs assessment focusing on a health department's capacity in both the Core Competencies for Public Health Professionals as well as the Emergency Preparedness Core Competencies for all Public Health Workers.
In addition to assessing the capacities of public health agencies, the Center is conducting a training needs assessment of other licensed clinical partners including primary care physicians, nurses, pharmacists, infectious disease specialists, etc. This topic-based training needs assessment will evaluate the key training needs for relevant agencies and health care providers.
Results from both of these assessments will assist health departments and other health care providers in determining their training needs with the goal of improving workforce capacity to provide essential public health services in times of emergency.
The TriNet Seismic Network, composed of CalTech, USGS, and the California Division of Mines and Geology is currently developing a network of hundreds of seismic monitors throughout Southern California to record earthquake ground motions. While the primary purpose of this network is to collect data for scientific research, the information could also be used to alert people at sites distant from the epicenter that a potentially damaging earthquake has begun and is heading their way. This alert could be received 10 to 50 seconds prior to the start of heavy ground shaking.
In 2000-2001, CPHD conducted a survey to identify potential users and uses of the early earthquake alert system that TriNet is calling SCAN - Seismic Computerized Alert Network. The survey was part of a larger study being conducted by ABS Consulting/EQE International and the TriNet group, designed to obtain feedback on the potential benefits, costs, and policy issues associated with implementing SCAN in Southern California.
The Center received funding from the National Science Foundation to collaborate with researchers in Japan to improve casualty estimation models for post-earthquake response and mitigation. As part of this project, CPHD conducted a review of the scientific literature on earthquake injury studies and building damage. Data from the Northridge earthquake and the Kobe earthquake will be fit to the classification scheme and used to refine casualty estimation models for urban earthquakes.
For more information about CPHD's projects, contact the Center
at 310-794-0864 or cphdr@ucla.edu.