Public health investigation: focus group study of a regional infectious disease exercise.

Background: Local health departments and public health nurses are crucial in surveillance and response during public health emergencies. Simulated exercises are useful to train personnel and test emergency preparedness plans, but these exercises can be inconvenient or unrealistic. To address these drawbacks, "Public Health Investigation" (PHI), a multicounty, electronic infectious disease exercise, was created.

"Public health investigation": a pilot, multi-county, electronic infectious disease exercise.

Introduction: Funding increases after September 11, 2001 have provided impetus to improve public health emergency preparedness plans. Training of local health department staff and coordination between counties are important components of these plans. Electronic media have been used to facilitate dissemination of training, and a need for evaluation has been identified.

Evaluation of interdisciplinary terrorism preparedness programs: a pilot focus group study.

Many terrorism preparedness trainings occur throughout the United States, yet few qualitatively examine trainees' needs and interests, reactions to training, or suggestions for training improvement. Eleven posttraining focus groups were conducted with 31 training participants at six sites. Participants were stratified by health profession discipline, and discipline-specific moderators conducted each session to better understand and probe for feedback.