Community Awareness and Acceptance
It is important that the public be made aware that the community may have limited resources readily available in a public health catastrophe, the care may be different and in alternate locations. The community’s understanding and acceptance of how the plan addresses these issues is critical to: increase knowledge about the potential challenges the community will face during a public health emergency and an effective community-wide implementation program. The local office of emergency management or chief elected official including the organizations that have been involved in developing the plan can host a Community Forum or “Town Hall” and invite the community to participate. Publicity about this meeting by the local media to widely spread the opportunity for participation will be key.
Local Responding Agencies Coordination
Once the plan for medical surge response has been developed and the community has provided input into the plan, and revisions made and plan finalized, all public and private sector agencies with responsibilities delineated in the plan must begin to incorporate those responsibilities into their organization’s emergency management plan. Most agencies will be aware of the plan due to participation in the plan development workgroup or participation in the tabletop exercise to test the plan and will readily work on this very important implementation step; however, some organizations may be developing an emergency management or response plan for the first time. Alignment with the community’s emergency operations plan by all organizations is critical. No business or service organization is too small…everyone will have a role to play in community response.
The outcome of this step is to ensure that each local agency is aware of their role and willing to participate in community medical surge response as described in plan and is beginning to describe that role in their own internal emergency management plan. Organizations change, capacity increases, and communities grow and develop. So must emergency plans. A process for plan testing and revision must accompany each plan developed as well an ongoing education, training and community awareness program is as essential as these initial plan development and agency implementation activities. DHS HSEEP guidance.
