Conference call for SART and similar programs

Conference call for SART and similar programs February 16, 2006 Minutes 1. Introductions a. Dr. Kevin Dennison (CO), Dr. Andrea Spehar (FL), Dr. Greg Christie (FL), Dr. Arnie Goldman (CT), Kelly Harrington (ASPCA), Kay Mayfield (UAN-EARS), Ollie Davidson (HSUS), Ian Stewart (USDA), Ed Powers (Petfinder.com), Kristina Hancock (ABA), Dr. Jane Galyon (CFSPH, ISU), Joel Hersch (PA), Cindy Lovern (AVMA), Dr. Dave Chico (NY), LTC Brian Noland (NORTHCOM), Dr. Christie Peterson (CFSPH, ISU), Dr. Cheryl Fuller (CA), Dr. Mike Wooten (USDA), Dr. Maria Luke (GA), Raquel Aluisy UAN EARS, Emily Stone (CO), Catherine Albert (CO) 2. Updates/announcements a. USAHA sub-committee: i. The United States Animal Health Association Committee on Animal Emergency Management has established a sub-committee on all-hazards animal emergency issues. This sub-committee has started meeting by teleconference. Only one meeting has been held to date, but it is expected to meet again soon. b. ABA TIPS Animal Law Committee: Kristina Hancock from the American Bar Association updated the group on their legislative call relative to animal emergency issues. They have been working with a number of national non-governmental entities that have significant legislative lobbying capacities. The group has been trying to update their expertise on animal emergency management issues. Two pieces of legislation were discussed at this point: i. PETS Act: A house bill that would add a requirement for state and local emergency plans for pets and service animals. The house version does not provide any resources to states and local entities in support of this. By itself, many people expressed the opinion that the PETS Act does little to really improve the system. A senate version may emerge with additional provisions. ii. Agroterrorism Prevention Act of 2005 (Sen. Specter, PA): This may be introduced in 2006. Dr. Goldman and Dr. Bull visited Senator Specter’s office this fall to discuss the bill. The original bill included $12 million for supporting state programs such as SART. c. AVMA will host a national summit on animal emergency issues in Crystal City, VA at the Double Tree on May 5-6. The session will be all day on the 5th and ½ day on the 6th. AVMA will solicit the participation of key stakeholders and the meeting will also be open to additional participants. d. SART USA: Dr. Bull was unable to attend the call. Dr. Dennison reported that he understood that PetSmart Charities had provided grant funding to help an additional four states with initial SART meetings. SART and similar programs: conference call minutes 2-16-06 e. HSUS, Ollie Davidson announced that the 4th National Conference on Animals in Disaster will be held on May 31-June 3 in Washington DC area. The are preparing a highly interactive format with panels and audience participation over PowerPoint presentations. Follow this link for additional information on the conference: http://www.hsus.org/hsus_field/hsus_disaster_center/national-conferenceon-animals-in-disaster-2006/national_conference_2006.html f. Rocky Mountain Regional BEAR Conference: Dr. Dennison announce a conference targeting FEMA Region 8, (CO,WY,SD,ND,MT,UT) on March 18-19, 2006. The conference is presented by the Rocky Mountain Regional Center of Excellence for Biodefense and Emerging Infectious Diseases, CSU, and the Colorado Veterinary Medical Foundation with sponsorships by Petfinder.com Foundation, PetSmart Charities, and support from the Colorado Division of Emergency Management. Additional sponsorship has been provided by HSUS. g. FEMA EMI Food and Ag Terrorism Course: Emergency Management Institute E916 will be held May 15-19, September 5-8, and November 28Dec 2, 2006. You can register for these courses through you state emergency management agency. Some information is available at: http://www.training.fema.gov/emiweb/EMICourses/index.asp. The description of the course is as follows: i. IEMC/Food and Agriculture Terrorism: (E916) This IEMC focuses on preparing for, determining scope of and recovering from, terrorist acts on our nation’s food and agriculture systems. Participants will be introduced to situational threat assessment, ICS/NIMS, crime scene issues, decontamination, disposal and restoration of food systems, quarantine/recall concerns, resource management, economic impacts, emergency operation center protocols, as well as societal concerns, case study analysis, and roles & responsibilities as outlined in Homeland Security Presidential Decision Directive 9. As with other IEMCs, officials from Federal, State, and local public health/agriculture agencies, emergency services disciplines, elected/appointed officials and private industry will have an opportunity to participate in exercises simulating terrorist acts upon food/agriculture infrastructure. ii. Prerequisites Required: None iii. Recommended: IS-195, Basic ICS iv. ACE Recommendation: Credit Hours: 2 hours, Level: UD or LD, Curriculum: Public Administration, Emergency Management v. Course Length: 4 1/2 days vi. CEUs: 2.5 3. Resource and management update a. Credentialing: Dr. Sebastian Heath is organizing a working group to formulate a national standard for individual credentialing. This process will examine the credentialing system in Tennessee that has been promoted within the SE Animal Health Association. Dr. Dennison briefly summarized that as being composed of three levels of credentialed individuals: i. Veterinarians Page 2 of 5 SART and similar programs: conference call minutes 2-16-06 b. c. d. e. f. ii. Animal technicians, including veterinary technicians, animal control officers and extension agents. These are animal professionals that should already have a higher degree of competency in animal management. iii. Volunteers iv. Training includes IS-700 NIMS, IS-100, IS-200 and a course on the state animal emergency plan and protocols. v. The group noted that current efforts in many other states, PA, FL, CO, GA, etc. are somewhat similar in strategy and content. This appears to be a highly logical model and creating a national standard will certainly help states in creating interoperability. Resource typing issues i. Ollie Davidson reported that FEMA does not have a budget to support a resource typing revision effort at this time, but they are willing to review recommendations from a group of stakeholders and, if appropriate, incorporate those into a new animal resource typing format. The current committee of state programs will continue to review those materials and will meet in person at the HSUS conference to further work on this effort. ii. Dr. Dennison can be contacted if you have not seen a copy of the draft from the Baltimore meeting on resource typing. CART Self-study program i. Dr. Dennison noted that CO is developing a self-study or 1 day CART training presentation. The CART programs will also be using existing Incident Command and NIMS training opportunities to create basic credentialed animal responders within their county. Dr. Dennison expects to complete these materials within a couple months and will gladly share any materials. Veterinary training i. The Colorado Veterinary Medical Foundation and CSU are partnering in creating veterinary training for veterinarians and technicians. The University of Southern Florida and University of Florida are working on a similar project and all these groups are working to collaborate. There is certainly an opportunity for additional groups to work together on this and similar issues. NIMS training i. Ollie Davidson asked if anyone had created a basic module concerning animal issues that could be presented routinely with the NIMS training. No one had done this, but there was consensus that this would not be difficult to accomplish, since it would be very basic materials. The resource and training group will add this to the list of concerns. Credentialing of training: Dr. Christie noted that to qualify for DHS support of training that some of the training modules being developed might need to be certified through DHS. The DHS Centers of Excellence Page 3 of 5 SART and similar programs: conference call minutes 2-16-06 and other Centers of Excellence (eg HHS) could be very helpful in accomplishing this. g. UAN, HSUS, ASPCA, and AHA met recently to discuss collaboration on training issues. They are working to see if they can work with states to establish standards for training programs and credentialing. They also have an interest in establishing some standardized forms to better facilitate procedures from state to state for animal care during disasters. There was consensus that collaboration with states was essential to ensure that both NGOs and state programs had interoperable standards so as to reduce any challenges around interoperability. h. Train the trainer: Dr. Dennison noted that while some training programs may be appropriate for states or national entities to deliver, many introductory level training programs should be formatted in a “train-thetrainer” manner in order to facilitate regular delivery at the local or regional level. Iowa State University (CFSPH) noted that they have a lot of experience in developing train the trainer materials and would gladly contribute where needed. 4. Citizen Corps: Dr. Dennison asked if many states had been developing close relationships with Citizen Corps. Several of the participating states were seeing a supportive relationship with CERT and Medical Reserve Corps programs. In CO and PA, some CERT related grants were being used to support animal-related preparedness. Ollie Davidson reported that at a Washington DC area Citizen Corps meeting animal issues were discussed as a concern for CC. Although no consensus was sought, there appears to be a significant opportunity to create a capability within Citizen Corps to facilitate local animal response teams to tap into Citizen Corps grant funding in the future. 5. Influenza: Dr. Dennison reported that CO SART is active in avian influenza and pandemic influenza planning. In addition, Dr. Bonnie Henry from Toronto in a recent conference about SARS management noted how many issues related to animal came up in their quarantine program, including how to walk dogs when people were confined to their apartments or condos. Delivery of pet supplies/food, pets needing veterinary care, and the potential for animals being impacted by an influenza virus as well all could create great challenges for states and local communities during a disease epidemic. 6. Networking/communications update a. A serious discussion ensued about the target audience of this call and various sub-committees. Dr. Christie noted that SART programs are really multi-agency coordination groups associated with the state EOC to address animal and agricultural emergency issues. While some states have MAC components called SART, some do not use this terminology and may not be comfortable with participation because of this. The question was whether the target audience of this call is should be termed SART and SART-like programs or state animal-ag MAC programs. USDA Animal Care has proposed to begin sponsoring this call, so Dr. Dennison will confer with them to get feedback on this subject. Page 4 of 5 SART and similar programs: conference call minutes 2-16-06 b. This discussion led to a concern over confusion about the appropriate national forum for a number of state-to-state and national discussions. AVMA, HSUS and a number of national entities have strong interest in supporting such a national forum, but no single group can take this on without risking alienating important stakeholders. It was suggested that the AVMA Summit and the HSUS NCAD be used to address the issue of what a national forum would look like, who were the key stakeholders, and what resources would support such a forum. c. There was some discussion about the future times for conference calls. Since there is no possibility of finding the perfect time, we will attempt to find a time when key members are available. The third Thursday is a problem for some key participants, so we will try for the second Thursday of each month. The mornings were suggested as being somewhat better. The next calls will be: i. Thursday March 9th: 11am Eastern, 10am Central, 9am Mountain, 9am Pacific ii. Thursday, April 13th: 11am Eastern, 10am Central, 9am Mountain, 9am Pacific Submitted by: Kevin Dennison, DVM Colorado Veterinary Medical Foundation State Animal Response Team program director 303.539.7633 KevinDennison@colovma.org Page 5 of 5