Publications by authors named "Luna-Pinto S"
This paper describes the factors that support recovery of public health infrastructure (PHI), including conditions that facilitated or hindered recovery in United States (US) territories impacted by hurricanes Irma and Maria. A deductive approach was used to categorize data from five organizations that received crisis hurricane recovery (CHR) funds from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.* Spending was grouped into five infrastructure gaps: (1) human resources, (2) informatic upgrades, (3) equipment, (4) minor repairs, and (5) preventive maintenance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFContext: In September 2017, Hurricanes Irma and Maria impacted Puerto Rico, causing significant disruption of immunization services and vaccine losses due to widespread infrastructure and electrical grid damage and resulting cold chain failures.
Objective: To describe posthurricane efforts undertaken to restore and strengthen immunization services provided by Puerto Rico's federally funded Vaccines for Children (VFC) Program, a network of clinics that provide vaccines to eligible children.
Design: Historical records were reviewed to characterize Puerto Rico's prehurricane immunization system.
Article Synopsis
- Public Health Laboratories (PHLs) in Puerto Rico suffered significant damage from Hurricane Maria, becoming inoperable immediately after the storm.
- A quality management system (QMS) approach was adopted, starting in October 2017 and concluding in May 2018, successfully restoring 92% of the original laboratory testing capacity.
- The lessons learned from this recovery effort are shared as valuable resources for other jurisdictions to improve their public health emergency preparedness.