The Emergency Preparedness
and Planning Office works with numerous internal, governmental
and community partners such as county health departments,
hospitals and the Arizona tribes to enable public health to
respond to an emergency. Specifically, these agencies have
plans to receive and dispense antibiotics and medical supplies
to the community during a bioterrorism event or disease
outbreak. Some of the areas of planning include:
- Overt and covert bioterrorism
- Emerging infectious disease outbreaks
- SARS
- Pandemic influenza
- Flooding
- Power outage
Inclusion of
the Department into the State-wide Emergency Management System
is taking place in conjunction with emergency first responders
and hospitals. This will enable the Department to
communicate with these two very important response entities.
In addition, the Office has a Food Biosecurity program geared to
assist the county environmental health departments and tribes in
educate their stakeholders in this area and recognize food
security risks.
Exercises
Since 2000, the Arizona Department of
Health Services, Office of Public Health Emergency Preparedness
and Response, has coordinated or participated in dozens of
emergency exercises. These exercises are of three
varieties:
-
Table Top Exercises – designed
to bring emergency response partners together in a room to
work through scenarios and identify gaps in planning
-
Functional Exercises – designed
to field test systems and portions of plans to further
determine gaps in response systems
-
Full
Scale Exercises – field exercises the fully testing plans,
personnel, equipment, and systems
Notable Department Exercises:
-
November 2002 – Full scale
exercise of the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) system.
The Exercise tested the requesting, receiving, breakdown,
transportation and distribution of the SNS to county
dispensing facilities and tested the largest counties’ ability
to deliver mass prost-exposure prophylactic antibiotics to
thousands of mock victims.
-
May
2004 – Regional Tabletop exercises, including local health
departments and the majority of the state’s hospitals,
designed to test the ability of public health and health care
to coordinate resources during an emergency.
-
March
2005 – Arizona Department of Health Services Health Emergency
Operations Center (HEOC) Drill (full-scale exercise).
This exercise involved a call-down to the Department’s key
decision-makers via the Department’s Health Alert Network.
The HEOC was fully operational and waiting for their arrival
within one hour.
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