Preparing for pandemic influenza: California confronts the legal implications.

California Department of Health Services and California Distance Learning Health Network collaborated with the California Conference of Local Health Officers to produce the Pandemic Influenza and Public Health Law: What Public Health Departments Need to Know satellite broadcast and tabletop exercise training. Local health officers, county counsels, school superintendents, hospital administrators, and senior decision makers in California planned for ways stakeholders would make legal use of public health law in case of pandemic emergency. The training provided an opportunity for decision makers to become familiar with statutes and regulations in anticipation of such an event.

Preparing public health nurses for pandemic influenza through distance learning.

As a global influenza pandemic appears imminent with the spread of avian influenza, the California Department of Health Services (CDHS) and the California Distance Learning Health Network (CDLHN) presented a live 90-min satellite broadcast and subsequent 2-hr small group problem-solving tabletop exercise to practice interventions needed to minimize the consequences of a pandemic event. Public health nurses (PHNs), managers, and other staff in laboratories, clinical care, veterinary medicine, environmental health, public information and safety, emergency management, and transportation down linked the program, broadcast by satellite from the CDHS Richmond Laboratory Campus, to view on-site locally. PHNs represented the professional category with the highest number of participants for those conducting the program outside of California.