CPHD Past Projects
Assessing the Public Health Impacts of Hurricane Katrina
Bioterrorism Training and Curriculum Development Program
Centers for Public Health Preparedness (CPHP)
CONOPS Disaster Mental Health
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)
Los
Angeles County Public Health CERT Training
Los Angeles County Public Health-FBI Joint Investigation
Modeling Injuries and Fatalities in Non-Ductile Concrete
Frame Buildings
Pre-Event Message Development
PsySTART
Public
Health Emergency Preparedness Community Outreach Project II (PHEPCOP II)
Seattle Project
Taiwan Project
Training Needs Assessment
TriNet SCAN Study
US/Japan Project
Assessing the Public Health Impacts of Hurricane Katrina
The Center received funding from the National Science Foundation to examine the public health impacts of a large-scale emergency and correlate those with the hazard, damage, and post-event activities. The study will provide essential information that can be used to improve decision-making regarding mitigation, preparedness, and response activities that can reduce the potential for short and long-term health burdens as a result of hurricanes.
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 for
Public Health and Disasters collaborates with state and local public health
agencies to educate and train front line public health practitioners to prepare
for and respond to bioterrorism and other public health threats and emergencies.
The Center provides education and training services including: assessing the
training needs and capacity of the public health workforce in both the core
public health competencies and competencies in emergency preparedness; developing
emergency response plans and annexes; conducting on-site, all-hazards training
tailored to each agency; designing, implementing, and evaluating exercises that
are HSEEP-compliant; and offering technical assistance to agencies to improve
their emergency preparedness and response capacity.
CPHD has also developed online resources to assist agencies with their emergency
public health preparedness such as Writing a Disaster
Plan: A Guide for Health Departments and the Hazard
Risk Assessment Instrument (HRAI), a unique tool designed for use as a standard
approach to hazard risk assessment that is adapted to the public health impacts
of hazards. Additionally, the Center hosts a nationally recognized annual conference
as well as regional workshops on topics in emergency public health.
CPHD is part of a national network of Centers
for Public Health Preparedness (CPHP) funded by the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention through Grant/Cooperative Agreement U90/CCU924253.
The Center for Public Health and Disasters is working with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health (DMH) to develop a catastrophic mental health concept of operations and an operational incident management protocol. In addition, the Center will develop a training curricula for LA County DMH staff and contractors as well as other disaster mental health providers or entities operating in LA County.
All materials will build upon existing expertise and will be evaluated to ensure that a comprehensive disaster mental health incident management strategy is established. The resources will address the complexity of cultural diversity, special needs, and other unique characteristics and will integrate evidence-based practices, interventions, and competencies.
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.
Los Angeles County Public Health CERT Training
The Center for Public Health and Disasters worked with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to develop an optional Public Health module for trained Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) members. The goal of this 1/2 day module is to provide CERT volunteers with tools and strategies that will enable them to continue to protect their neighborhoods in the event of public health emergencies involving environmental health, infectious diseases and prolonged loss of utility infrastructure resources.
Los Angeles County Public Health-FBI Joint Bioterrorism Investigation
The Center for Public Health and Disasters worked with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health in furthering their relationship with the FBI and creating a regional model for collaboration between law enforcement and 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 for Public Health and Disasters is working with the Los Angeles County Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Agency to support the County as a participant of the National Hospital Preparedness Program (NHPP) to provide a pilot system for the triage of psychological causalities. CPHD will pilot PsySTART™, a comprehensive system that includes an evidence-based rapid triage tag and an Internet accessible application to manage the collection and analysis of post-disaster psychological impact data. The PsySTART™ system also includes a National Incident Management System (NIMS) compliant disaster mental health incident management system (MHIMS). This system will be used in the thirteen (13) Disaster Resource Center (DRC) hospitals and a health clinic DRC in Los Angeles.
Public
Health Emergency Preparedness Community Outreach Project II (PHEPCOP II) –
California Department of Public Health
The Center for Public Health and Disasters and the California Department of
Public Health are working together on the second phase of a community outreach
project to gather data on the practices and preferences of California residents
for receiving information regarding H1N1 influenza. CPHD developed and disseminated
a mailed questionnaire throughout the State of California to garner this feedback.
Without inclusion of and input from the diverse populations in California about
strategies and policies, adherence to public health recommendation strategies
(e.g., isolation, and community mitigation, social distancing, school dismissals)
may fail, resulting in distrust, over-utilization of medical and public health
resources, and potentially, social unrest. The goal of the project is to empower
the people of California to participate in public health decision-making processes
by creating a mechanism for dialogue with officials before catastrophe strikes.
Identifying perceptions of risk associated with an H1N1 influenza outbreak will
be used to identify risk communications messaging for the California Department
of Health and other public health partners during emergency.
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.