Air Quality Monitoring During High-Level Biocontainment Ground Transport: Observations From Two Operational Exercises.

Objective: Stretcher transport isolators provide mobile, high-level biocontainment outside the hospital for patients with highly infectious diseases, such as Ebola virus disease. Air quality within this confined space may pose human health risks.

Methods: Ambient air temperature, relative humidity, and CO concentration were monitored within an isolator during 2 operational exercises with healthy volunteers, including a ground transport exercise of approximately 257 miles.

A modeling study to inform screening and testing interventions for the control of SARS-CoV-2 on university campuses.

University administrators face decisions about how to safely return and maintain students, staff and faculty on campus throughout the 2020-21 school year. We developed a susceptible-exposed-infectious-recovered (SEIR) deterministic compartmental transmission model of SARS-CoV-2 among university students, staff, and faculty. Our goals were to inform planning at our own university, Emory University, a medium-sized university with around 15,000 students and 15,000 faculty and staff, and to provide a flexible modeling framework to inform the planning efforts at similar academic institutions.

Development and Usability Testing of a Web-based COVID-19 Self-triage Platform.

Introduction: The development and deployment of a web-based, self-triage tool for severe respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (COVID-19 disease) aimed at preventing surges in healthcare utilization could provide easily understandable health guidance with the goal of mitigating unnecessary emergency department (ED) and healthcare visits. We describe the iterative development and usability testing of such a tool. We hypothesized that adult users could understand and recall the recommendations provided by a COVID-19 web-based, self-triage tool.

The 2019 Core Content of Emergency Medical Services Medicine.

On March 13, 2019 the EMS Examination Committee of the American Board of Emergency Medicine (ABEM) approved modifications to the Core Content of EMS Medicine. The Core Content is used to define the subspecialty of EMS Medicine, provides the basis for questions to be used during written examinations, and leads to development of a certification examination blueprint. The Core Content defines the universe of knowledge for the treatment of prehospital patients that is necessary to practice EMS Medicine.

The engagement of academic institutions in community disaster response: a comparative analysis.

Objective: Using comparative analysis, we examined the factors that influence the engagement of academic institutions in community disaster response.

Methods: We identified colleges and universities located in counties affected by four Federal Emergency Management Agency-declared disasters (Kentucky ice storms, Hurricanes Ike and Gustav, California wildfires, and the Columbia space shuttle disintegration) and performed key informant interviews with officials from public health, emergency management, and academic institutions in those counties. We used a comparative case study approach to explore particular resources provided by academic institutions, processes for engagement, and reasons for engagement or lack thereof in the community disaster response.

"Picture to puncture": a novel time metric to enhance outcomes in patients transferred for endovascular reperfusion in acute ischemic stroke.

Background: Comprehensive stroke centers allow for regionalization of subspecialty stroke care. Efficacy of endovascular treatments, however, may be limited by delays in patient transfer. Our goal was to identify where these delays occurred and to assess the impact of such delays on patient outcome.

Facilitators and Barriers for Effective Academic-Community Collaboration for Disaster Preparedness and Response.

Context: For academic institutions to meaningfully contribute to community-disaster preparedness and response, they must effectively collaborate with governmental public health and emergency management agencies.

Objective: To explore the opinions of leaders of public health and emergency management agencies and academic institutions regarding the facilitators for and barriers to effective collaboration for disaster preparedness and response.

Design, Setting, And Participants: We convened focus groups of leaders of state and local public health and emergency management agencies and academic institutions in conjunction with the 2010 Public Health Preparedness Summit and the 2010 Southeastern Center for Emerging Biological Threats Meeting.

Role of academic institutions in community disaster response since september 11, 2001.

Objective: To describe the role of academic institutions in the community response to Federal Emergency Management Agency-declared disasters from September 11, 2001, to February 1, 2009.

Methods: We conducted a review of the published literature and Internet reports to identify academic institutions that participated in the community response to disaster events between September 11, 2001, to February 1, 2009, inclusive. From retrieved reports, we abstracted the identity of the academic institutions and the resources and services each provided.

Web-based self-triage of influenza-like illness during the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic.

The sudden emergence of 2009 H1N1 influenza in the spring of that year sparked a surge in visits to emergency departments in New York City and other communities. A larger, second wave of cases was anticipated the following autumn. To reduce a potential surge of health system utilization without denying needed care, we enlisted the input of experts from medicine, public health, nursing, information technology, and other disciplines to design, test, and deploy clinical algorithms to help minimally trained health care workers and laypeople make informed decisions about care-seeking for influenza-like illness.

Situational uses of syndromic surveillance.

Since 2001, many state and local health departments have implemented automated systems to monitor healthcare use and to promptly identify and track epidemics and other public health threats. In 2007-08, we conducted case studies of selected events with actual or potential public health impacts to determine whether and how health departments and hospitals used these new systems. We interviewed public health and hospital representatives and applied qualitative analysis methods to identify response themes.

Medical outreach following a remote disaster: lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, many individuals were evacuated to the Atlanta area (1,306 medical evacuees, over 100,000 self-evacuees), placing considerable strain on an already overburdened healthcare system. With the aim of improving future disaster responsiveness, we designed this in-depth case study to identify systemic vulnerabilities and gaps in community responsiveness to an influx of evacuees from a remote disaster. Qualitative methods were used to interview key informants both individually and in focus groups.