The Issues

Advocate for improvements in community-based planning

Disasters involving biological, chemical or nuclear terrorism are community-wide concerns likely to require a broad array of community resources to supplement the health care system. Therefore, a community-wide perspective and community-wide planning is essential for readiness. However, in many communities, the linkages and relationships between frontline responder organizations are weak or nonexistent. In order to most effectively detect, respond to and recover from disasters, local communities must have comprehensive and operationally effective disaster response plans that integrate all the required frontline responders. Such plans should be developed through collaborative processes that involve all major stakeholders such as fire services, law enforcement, hospitals, physicians, public health, EMS, and elected officials. The plans must assure a coordinated response wherein each organization has a clear understanding of its role, responsibilities, and authorities, as well as those of the other organizations. Community-based planning also should include initiatives to educate the public about terrorism and the roles played by frontline responders in preventing and reducing the health consequences of terrorist acts and other emergencies. To be maximally effective, plans must involve regular exercises for practice and to detect deficiencies in the plan for subsequent correction.