Working Together:

Emergency Management and Public Health

Dr. Joseph V. Saitta

Director, Public Safety Institute

Is there a common ground for emergency managers and health department people to work cooperatively on homeland security? Yes, definitely. This article will present specific examples of activities that interconnect both functions.

Counterterrorism Task Force
First off, consider the development of local counterterrorism task forces. In larger cities the FBI’s liaisons for the Regional Counterterrorism Task Forces are usually its Weapons of Mass Destruction (“WMD”) Coordinators. The purpose of these task forces is to prevent, mitigate, respond to, investigate, prosecute, and recover from terrorism. Outside of the major metropolitan areas you may have to be the initiator of such a group. The membership should include emergency management, public health, fire/rescue, law enforcement, hospitals, public works, emergency communications, disaster response groups (such as the National Volunteer Organizations Active in Disasters), and so forth. If one of these Task Forces already exists in your area make sure that the agencies and organizations listed above are included in its membership.

By meeting regularly to exchange information these Task Forces can build effective face-to-face relationships that will improve your area’s ability to respond to any type of major incident, terrorism or not. Consider expanding the membership of this group outside of your traditional service area – any terrorism incident is likely to need to draw on the resources of an entire region, if not an entire state or multi-state area, plus the federal government as well.

Strategic National Stockpile
Many of the issues you will have to deal with at Counterterrorism Task Force meetings are truly multi-disciplinary, and clearly require the active involvement of both emergency management (EM) and public health (PH). For example, the preparations necessary to order, receive, break down, and distribute the Strategic National Stockpile (formerly known as the National Pharmaceutical Stockpile), which is a well-thought out selection of approximately 50 tons of pharmaceuticals and supplies used to manage the medical consequences of a chemical or biological incident, requires that type of inter-connectedness.

Beyond EM and PH, there is a need for federal, state, and local coordination of law enforcement, fire/rescue, hospitals, private pharmacies, and so forth. Receiving and distributing sites are often high schools, community centers, and other such large governmental facilities. This requires further coordination from school boards, parks and recreation departments, etc. Since EM has often pre-planned these sites for disaster use it can provide PH with detailed information about building plans, desirable building features (such as loading docks, tractor-trailer access, security , etc.), emergency contact information, etc.


Exercise Design
Another area where the two groups can effectively interface is in exercise design and conduct. Clearly EM personnel should have had a great deal of exercise design training (whether from the Emergency Management Institute or state and local academies), experience in developing exercises, and in the actual conducting and evaluating of them. Further, EM should have an excellent grasp of the resources (emergency communications, shelters, backup generators, etc.) that would be used in an exercise, and in a disaster. Meanwhile, Public Health should be able to provide you with valuable insights into communicable disease, hospital surge capacity, and bioterrorism issues, which may be the focus of a jurisdictional exercise.

A related area is that EM may be in an excellent position to collate the variety of exercises that are “popping up” in communities with a view towards developing a master coordinating calendar.

Training
Both groups have unique training assets. Here are a few possible subject areas that emergency management could present to public health personnel: principles of emergency management, shelter operations, incident command/unified command, and disaster communications. And, in return, here are a few that public health could teach for emergency management: overview of epidemiology, disaster medical assets, and bioterrorism agents: indicators, medical response/recovery.

About the Author
Joseph V. Saitta is the Director of the Public Safety Institute. Joe has worked for over two decades in counterterrorism. He has significant work experience as a federal agent, a deputy fire chief, and as a former military officer in the nuclear, biological, and chemical field. Joe is also a consultant for Emergency Visions, a leading consequence management solutions provider of software and consulting services. For more information, please visit www.emergencyvisions.com.