Promising Practices: Pandemic Preparedness Tools

This initiative is a participatory, technology-based effort to collect, share, and evaluate models for dealing with public health emergencies such as avian influenza and pandemic influenza. Organisers began this process by interviewing public health experts in order to understand how best to clarify key subject areas, conduct research, enumerate key audiences, and determine how to reach these audiences. Then, state and local public health experts in pandemic influenza preparedness nationwide took part in a practice identification and selection process - largely through online surveys, an email survey, a toll-free phone line, and a survey form for telephone and in-person interviews - to select categories through which to collect and organise the information on the Promising Practices website. CIDRAP staff with expertise in one or more of the categories then served as first reviewers for practices. In many cases, the practice was sent out for review by one or more of the 22 US experts (including expert reviewers) who assisted CIDRAP. Portions of reviewers' responses were incorporated into the practice descriptions to clarify and enhance the context for each practice.

The result of this process is an interactive website that shares information, and invites contributions. For example, by clicking on "Collaborations" under the "Models for Care" heading, a visitor to the website may learn about practices aimed at strengthening formal collaborations between public health and the healthcare system, such as the California Primary Care Telemedicine Project. Similarly, under the "Communication" heading, one can learn about a variety of risk communication tools and experiences/campaigns, such as New York State's "Media Forums on Preparedness for Pandemic Influenza". School toolkits and other toolkits are offered, as well. Visitors to the website may search by language or by state (an interactive map is designed to facilitate this). They may also learn about ethics projects, such as a guidebook that emerged from a multidisciplinary work group in Minnesota that explored ethical issues surrounding vaccine distribution in the event of a pandemic. To submit content for consideration as a "promising practice", an online process enables people to detail their experiences with pandemic flu planning/management/communications.

Health, Risk Management.