The U.S. government has released its plan to deal with the health consequences associated with major national emergencies such as disease outbreaks, natural disasters, and terrorist attacks.
The National Health Security Strategy, available at www.hhs.gov/disasters
The plan outlines several objectives including fostering integrated, scalable health care delivery systems; incorporating postincident health recovery into planning and response; maintaining a workforce necessary to respond to health emergencies; and preventing or minimizing emerging threats to health. HHS will update the plan every 2 years to reflect advances in medicine and public health.
Although the National Health Security Strategy was prepared by the federal government, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that for the plan to be effective, it requires participation from everyone in the nation.
“As we've learned in the response to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, responsibility for improving our nation's ability to address existing and emergency health threats must be broadly shared by everyone—governments, communities, families, and individuals,” Ms. Sebelius said in a statement. “The National Health Security Strategy is a call to action for each of us so that every community becomes fully prepared and ready to recover quickly after an emergency.”
The new national plan provides a framework for physicians, in particular, to begin planning for their response to an emergency, Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, said in an interview. Looking back at the challenges that physicians faced during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Benjamin said that many of those obstacles could have been addressed in a systemic way if a strategy like this one had existed at the time.
This year, HHS officials, with the help of government and external partners, plan to analyze health care workforce levels, seeking to identify any areas where there is a shortage when it come to health security readiness. For example, shortages have already been identified in the number of public health nurses, epidemiologists, and laboratory personnel, according to HHS.
Dr. Benjamin said that workforce is a major issue. While part of the solution will likely involve recruiting more people to the health care field, it will also involve asking clinicians to expand their traditional scope of practice. For example, there is a range of emergency skills that practicing internists are trained in, but don't use in daily practice. As part of emergency planning, they may need to refresh those skills, he said.
Emergency skills also must be taught so that health care providers are ready for the long term, Dr. Benjamin said. That means reexamining graduate medical education to ensure that the full range of practitioners—physicians, nurses, physician assistants, and nurse practitioners—are able, he said. “We've never done that in a comprehensive way in our country.”
“Good planning for those kinds of emergencies, for your own needs as well as your family's and your patients' needs, is probably a good thing to do,” Dr. Benjamin said.