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A major lesson from the natural disasters and emergency preparedness work in North Carolina has been that groups and agencies need to work together. One the valuable for less visible partners for the state has been the North Carolina Institute for Public Health, part of the UNC School of Public Health, specifically its Center for Public Health Preparedness.
Begun in 1999 with funds from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the preparedness center has focused on preparing health professionals in bioterrorism, infectious disease, and other health threats. The Center has worked to develop a comprehensive self-assessment instrument based on the core public health and bioterrorism and emergency readiness competencies known as the Public Health Workforce Development System (PHWDS). Using PHWDS, public health workers can take the online assessment to identify training needs and develop a personalized training plan.
The next step is for health professionals to know where to turn to get training.
The North Carolina Center for Public Health Preparedness (NCCPHP) is a comprehensive training website offering free training modules with continuing education credits. This website provides frontline public health workers with convenient access to products that can improve current skills and ability to respond to health threats, including bioterrorism. Since January 2004, NCCPHP has developed 100 new trainings epidemiology methods, biological and chemical agents, the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS), public health law, forensic epidemiology, and other topics.
Also available online is FOCUS on Field Epidemiology, a bimonthly periodical with a hands-on, practical approach to various topics in field epidemiology. FOCUS is designed to provide public health field workers with the basic knowledge necessary to complete a field epidemiology investigation. The periodical is available as a downloadable PDF file and can be used for self-study or as a teaching tool for trainers.
But NCCPHP is not just about classroom exercises. The center regularly hosts drills and exercises for local health departments, local epidemiology teams, and Public Health Regional Surveillance Teams across the state.
In addition, NCCPHP sponsors Team Epi-Aid, an outbreak response team of students from UNC’s School of Public Health, organized to assist state and local health departments with outbreak investigations and other short-term projects. Team Epi-Aid provides students with an opportunity to gain practical public health experience, and health departments occasionally need workforce surge capacity to investigate outbreaks. Since this initiative began in January 2003, more than 110 students have logged 2,000 hours of volunteer work on projects ranging from disease outbreak investigations to smallpox vaccination adverse events surveillance.
For more information, visit the North Carolina Center for Public Health Preparedness online at www.sph.unc.edu/nccphp/.
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