The COPEWELL Rubric: A Self-Assessment Toolkit to Strengthen Community Resilience to Disasters.

Measurement is a community endeavor that can enhance the ability to anticipate, withstand, and recover from a disaster, as well as foster learning and adaptation. This project's purpose was to develop a self-assessment toolkit-manifesting a bottom-up, participatory approach-that enables people to envision community resilience as a concrete, desirable, and obtainable goal; organize a cross-sector effort to evaluate and enhance factors that influence resilience; and spur adoption of interventions that, in a disaster, would lessen impacts, preserve community functioning, and prompt a more rapid recovery. In 2016-2018, we engaged in a process of literature review, instrument development, stakeholder engagement, and local field-testing, to produce a self-assessment toolkit (or "rubric") built on the Composite of Post-Event Well-being (COPEWELL) model that predicts post-disaster community functioning and resilience.

COPEWELL: A Conceptual Framework and System Dynamics Model for Predicting Community Functioning and Resilience After Disasters.

Objective: Policy-makers and practitioners have a need to assess community resilience in disasters. Prior efforts conflated resilience with community functioning, combined resistance and recovery (the components of resilience), and relied on a static model for what is inherently a dynamic process. We sought to develop linked conceptual and computational models of community functioning and resilience after a disaster.

Design of the national health security preparedness index.

The importance of health security in the United States has been highlighted by recent emergencies such as the H1N1 influenza pandemic, Superstorm Sandy, and the Boston Marathon bombing. The nation's health security remains a high priority today, with federal, state, territorial, tribal, and local governments, as well as nongovernment organizations and the private sector, engaging in activities that prevent, protect, mitigate, respond to, and recover from health threats. The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), through a cooperative agreement with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response (OPHPR), led an effort to create an annual measure of health security preparedness at the national level.

The importance of establishing a national health security preparedness index.

Natural disasters, infectious disease epidemics, terrorism, and major events like the nuclear incident at Fukushima all pose major potential challenges to public health and security. Events such as the anthrax letters of 2001, Hurricanes Katrina, Irene, and Sandy, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and West Nile virus outbreaks, and the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic have demonstrated that public health, emergency management, and national security efforts are interconnected. These and other events have increased the national resolve and the resources committed to improving the national health security infrastructure.

Packaging and shipping capabilities of New York State hospital laboratories: a 3-year drill assessment.

In a previous publication, we discussed the results of the 2006-2007 New York State (NYS) Hospital Laboratory Drill Series which emphasized the need for ongoing testing and evaluation of laboratory preparedness capabilities, particularly those required to support hospital functions during a public health emergency. In this paper, we will discuss how a followup drill series in 2007-2008 was implemented in an effort to re-assess the ability of NYS acute care hospital facilities to recognize and respond to a suspected bioterrorism, chemical terrorism or pandemic flu emergency specimen submission event. We will explain how the results of the follow-up drill series, when compared to those of the original exercise, warranted a statewide hospital laboratory preparedness drill held in 2009, focused solely on addressing the overarching deficiency of chemical terrorism (CT) specimen submission capabilities.

Functional assessment of hospital laboratory packaging and shipping preparedness in New York State.

The 2006-2007 New York State (NYS) Hospital Laboratory Drill Series was implemented in order to test notification, referral and packaging and shipping (P&S) procedures at acute care hospital facilities (statewide, excluding New York City) that submit suspect bioterrorism (BT), chemical terrorism (CT), and/or pandemic influenza (Pan Flu) clinical specimens to the NYS Department of Health (DOH) Wadsworth Center for confirmatory testing. Results showed that 97% and 84% of hospital facilities had the ability to directly access the notification network and retrieve drill guidance, respectively. Most hospital laboratories (92%) demonstrated the ability to refer specimens to the Wadsworth Center laboratory.

An integrated information system for all-hazards health preparedness and response: New York State Health Emergency Response Data System.

Effective and timely exchange of information among healthcare, state and local public health, and other health emergency response partners is essential to all-hazards emergency preparedness and response. Since fall of 2001, NY State Department of Health has partnered with the healthcare and public health community in New York to implement a statewide Health Emergency Response Data System to meet this need. During this time, it has been used in a wide range of preparedness and response applications including regional and local exercises, surveillance, health facility asset tracking, and response to actual health events.