Optimizing a District of Columbia Strategic National Stockpile dispensing center.

On October 4, 2003, the District of Columbia Department of Health (DOH) held a Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) exercise designed to test its plan for operating mass dispensing centers during a bioterrorist attack or other emergency. The main goals of the exercise were to maximize the throughput of the dispensing plan and improve dispensing procedures. These goals are important for quantifying the resources (eg, numbers and types of staff) necessary to respond to different types and sizes of events, as well as for minimizing the potential for errors or confusion in dispensing medications.

Modeling the consequences of bioterrorism response.

Military medicine is playing important roles in preparing for the possibility of a covert biological attack on the United States. The objective of this work was to develop a spreadsheet tool that allows planners to compare the consequences of different speeds of response to a covert bioterrorist attack using the metric of preventable deaths. Our model simulates the number of patients to be treated and the number of deaths by day.