Emergency preparedness and community coalitions: opportunities and challenges

• Published in: Research brief no. 24; p. 1
• Main Authors: Carrier, Emily, Yee, Tracy, Cross, Dori, Samuel, Divya
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States 01-11-2012
• Subjects: Cooperative Behavior; Delivery of Health Care - organization & administration; Disaster Planning - methods; Emergencies; Government Agencies; Health Care Surveys; Health Facilities; Humans; Independent Practice Associations - organization & administration; Influenza A Virus, H1N1 Subtype; Influenza, Human - epidemiology; Motivation; Organizations; Outcome and Process Assessment (Health Care); Pandemics; Resource Allocation - methods; Rural Health Services; Surge Capacity - organization & administration; United States; United States

Being prepared for a natural disaster, infectious disease outbreak or other emergency where many injured or ill people need medical care while maintaining ongoing operations is a significant challenge for local health systems. Emergency preparedness requires coordination of diverse entities at the local, regional and national levels. Given the diversity of stakeholders, fragmentation of local health care systems and limited resources, developing and sustaining broad community coalitions focused on emergency preparedness is difficult. While some stakeholders, such as hospitals and local emergency medical services, consistently work together, other important groups--for example, primary care clinicians and nursing homes--typically do not participate in emergency-preparedness coalitions, according to a new qualitative study of 10 U.S. communities by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC). Challenges to developing and sustaining community coalitions may reflect the structure of preparedness activities, which are typically administered by designated staff in hospitals or large medical practices. There are two general approaches policy makers could consider to broaden participation in emergency-preparedness coalitions: providing incentives for more stakeholders to join existing coalitions or building preparedness into activities providers already are pursuing. Moreover, rather than defining and measuring processes associated with collaboration--such as coalition membership or development of certain planning documents--policy makers might consider defining the outcomes expected of a successful collaboration in the event of a disaster, without regard to the specific form that collaboration takes.