UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters
...advancing interdisciplinary efforts to reduce the health impacts of disasters on human populations Department of Community Health Sciences UCLA School of Public Health
Volume 11 - Fall 2004
Director’s Message
As a CDC-designated Center for Public Health Preparedness, one of our key charges is to work with state and local health departments to help improve the competency and capacity of the public health system. No small challenge. At the Center for Public Health and Disasters, we see this as an evolving, ongoing process that begins with a review of each agency’s current state of preparedness. By gathering information about an agency and its community needs, we can then turn our attention to providing assistance by building institutional capacity and training agency personnel. Building capacity might involve a technical review of selected documents or assistance with writing emergency plans. A training needs assessment of the agency’s staff and services can form the basis for an overall training plan. At the Center, our philosophy is that any trainings we develop must be tailored to the local community and focused on increasing competency. Consequently, outcomes must be evaluated to ensure that critical concepts are effectively mastered by participants. The final common pathway in building individual self-efficacy, competency, and institutional capacity is an evaluative exercise. This is a performance-based demonstration of the impact of the agency’s planning and training activities. Don’t be intimidated by the word “evaluative.” How else can an agency know what staff might do in a real emergency? Our goal is to create and deliver highly realistic exercise scenarios, while making the experience simultaneously challenging and…FUN! Our experience has shown that while the “play” of the exercise might evoke some of the stresses of reality, there are always moments that take the edge off or are even laughable. And, based on the observed areas of competency demonstrated in the exercise, we prepare an after-action report for agency study and “next steps” (see inside, “Project Update”). We are acutely aware that public health agencies have pre-existing staff and services to meet the ongoing needs of their communities. Our collective challenge in this partnership is to utilize existing resources or identify potential new ones as we move from everyday public health activities to emergency public health response capacity...an iterative and dynamic process.
Steven J. Rottman, MD, FACEP
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APHA Conference
UCLA CPHD at the APHA Annual Meeting November 6-10, 2004, Washington, DC Speaker Session Program Number: 3241.0 Monday, November 8, 2004: 2:30pm-4:30pm Abstract#: 85870 Public Health Ready in California: A unique agency/university experience Kimberley Shoaf, DrPH, Poki Stewart Namkung, MD, MPH, Kristin Tehrani, MPH, and Tamiza Z. Teja, MPH Description: Selected as one of the 12 pilot sites in Public Health Ready, the City of Berkeley Health Department worked with UCLA CPHD on a project entailing a training needs assessment of the public health staff, revision of the Department’s disaster plan, training of the entire public health staff, and a full-day modified functional exercise.
Project Update
Orange County Mass Vaccination Exercise
Robert Miyashiro, MPH Nearly fifty staff and volunteers affiliated with the UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters helped to conduct a formal evaluation of Orange County (Calif.) Health Care Agency (OCHCA)’s most recent exercise in assessing its bioterrorism disaster readiness on Wednesday, May 26, 2004. The event, which simulated the execution of a Mass Vaccination/Prophylaxis Clinic site that was established in response to a localized smallpox outbreak, engaged more than one hundred OCHCA staff, in addition to over a thousand volunteers from the surrounding community who came to play out the role of clinic patients. Held at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, CA, the clinic simulated the administration of nearly 1,400 smallpox immunizations within four hours of operation. In addition to more traditional handwritten note-taking methods of collecting qualitative data, the Center piloted the use of newer technologies, such as real-time barcode scanning, to aid in the electronic capturing of quantitative data by monitoring each volunteer’s progression through the clinic, time-stamping each participant at various stages throughout the exercise. This exercise is the third collaboration between the Center and OCHCA. The results yielded in two previous bioterrorism exercises completed in 2003 were essential cornerstones in the development of plans and protocols that were necessary in the implementation of this mass vaccination exercise.
Program Session Program Number: 3194.0 Monday, November 8, 2004: 12:30pm-2:00pm Board 10: Individual, household, and structural characteristics associated with pediatric injuries in the 1999 Kocaeli, Turkey earthquake Presented by Megumi Kano, MPH Disaster and Terrorism Poster Session
Exhibit Information Booth 369, Washington Convention Center Halls D&E Public Health Expo: November 6-10, 2004 The UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters The Center promotes interdisciplinary efforts to reduce the health impacts of domestic and international, natural and human-generated disasters. Through research, curriculum and trainings, the Center bridges theory and practice facilitating interaction between public health, medicine, engineering, physical and social sciences, and emergency management.
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Center Spotlight: Cristina Grijalva, Emergency Public Health Fellow
Christina Grijalva, MD, Provides Insight on Two-Year Program
When people ask me what I do for a living, they are often a bit perplexed when I tell them that I am a practicing emergency medicine physician, a graduate student studying emergency public health, and a budding researcher. I then explain that all of these activities are part of my Fellowship in Emergency Public Health through the UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters. This fellowship was designed for individuals who have completed a residency in Emergency Medicine and wish to pursue an MPH with a concentration in Emergency Public Health. Fellows prepare for professional activities in one of two major areas: 1) a leadership role in a public health agency in the field of emergency health planning and response and 2) an academic position that synthesizes emergency medicine and emergency public health. The CPHD Emergency Public Health fellowship has three main arms: graduate education in Community Health Sciences in the UCLA School of Public Health, participation in research and activities at the Center, and clinical emergency medicine shifts at the UCLA Medical Center. The public health degree is a crucial element of the fellowship in that it helps a fellow gain the skills to improve communication and partnerships within the multifaceted disaster response system consisting of fire, EMS, police, public health departments, and acute care facilities. As a graduate student, I have focused my studies on disaster public health and research methodology. Additionally, I have attended various state and national public health and disaster conferences as a means to expand my fund of knowledge and create community ties. Another part of the fellowship includes training in research and grant writing with mentorship from Center faculty and staff. Through the process of writing a research proposal to investigate community clinics’ role in augmenting surge capacity, I have learned the labor of love and intricacies involved in grant writing. My experience writing research proposals coupled with my graduate studies has enabled me to better understand research methodology and ethics. Other Center activities, such as the Orange County Mass Vaccination Exercise, have provided me with the opportunity to apply the theories learned in the public health classroom to real life public health practice. The third activity of this fellowship involves emergency medicine shifts and teaching residents at an academic center. The majority of this portion of the fellowship is spent in the ER doing clinical work and supervising resident physicians. In addition to the clinical work, I also continue my medical education by participating in journal club and emergency medicine lectures. For me, this unique post-graduate training fellowship has been an educationally rich experience within a structured program that is helping me gain the knowledge associated with health systems and disasters. My clinical and organizational skills have been augmented with the knowledge or ability to anticipate, prepare, and respond to the events of a disaster including disaster planning, simulation, evaluation, research, and response coordination. The training provided in this fellowship will facilitate my future role as an academic emergency medicine physician with a specialization in disaster preparedness, mitigation, and response.
Save the Date
Fourth UCLA Conference on Public Health and Disasters Location: Warner Center Marriott; Woodland Hills, CA Dates: May 1- 4, 2005 Visit www.cphd.ucla.edu for Conference Updates
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New Faces
Our Center is Growing! Please join us in welcoming the following new CPHD team members: Joshua Alexander, MPH, Project Coordinator Kym Hodge, MPH, Program Manager Michelle Kuba, MPH, Project Coordinator Alaina Snyder, MPA, Project Coordinator
Course Offerings
WINTER 2005
CHS 258-Cooperative Interagency Management in Disasters CHS 295-Selected Topics in Disaster Relief and Humanitarian Assistance
Director Steven J. Rottman, MD, FACEP
Course Offerings
SPRING 2005
CHS 256-Interdisciplinary Response to Infectious Disease Emergencies
Associate Director Linda B. Bourque, PhD Assistant Director Kimberley I. Shoaf, DrPH Chair, Community Health Sciences Don Morisky, ScD Dean, School of Public Health Linda Rosenstock, MD, MPH CPHD Phone: (310) 794-0864
UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters 1145 Gayley Avenue, Suite 304 Los Angeles, CA 90024
Nonprofit Organization US Postage Paid UCLA
Inside this issue: 1) 2) 2) 3) 3) 4) 4) Director's Message CPHD at APHA Mass Vaccination Exercise Post Graduate Fellowship CPHD Conference 2005 New Faces Course Offerings
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