May 23, 2007
Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response Guidance for Healthcare Workers and Healthcare Employers
Pandemic Influenza Preparedness and Response Guidance for Healthcare Workers and Healthcare Employers
104 pages; PDF
From the news release:
A comprehensive resource for healthcare planners and practitioners, the new guidance offers information and tools to assist the industry in preparing for and responding to an influenza pandemic. It includes technical information on infection control and industrial hygiene practices to reduce the risk of infection in healthcare settings; workplace preparations and planning issues; and OSHA standards that have special importance to pandemic preparedness planners and responders in the industry.
Source: OSHA (via Basesfky’s IWS Documented News Bureau)
May 17, 2007
Avoiding the Plague: an Assessment of U.S. Plans and Funding for Countering Bioterrorism
Avoiding the Plague: an Assessment of U.S. Plans and Funding for Countering Bioterrorism (PDF; 778 KB)
Source: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA)
From press release (PDF; 69 KB):
Biological weapons can cause massive casualties under the right circumstances. Moreover, compared to nuclear weapons, they may be substantially easier for a terrorist group to acquire. CSBA’s newest study, Avoiding the Plague: An Assessment of US Plans and Funding for Countering Bioterrorism, examines the nature of this threat, and both budgetary and non- budgetary aspects of current US efforts to counter bioterrorism.
CSBA’s report evaluates programs and spending in each of three areas:
- Preventing terrorists from acquiring biological weapons or the means of effectively employing those weapons to cause mass casualties, through non-military means;
- Defending against a terrorist attack with biological weapons, once it has been launched, through the use of various measures capable of detecting, protecting against and mitigating the effects of such an attack; and
- Attacking and destroying terrorists’ biological warfare capabilities through preventive or retaliatory operations.
April 20, 2007
Citizen Engagement in Emergency Planning for a Flu Pandemic: A Summary of the October 23, 2006 Workshop of the Disasters Roundtable
Citizen Engagement in Emergency Planning for a Flu Pandemic: A Summary of the October 23, 2006 Workshop of the Disasters Roundtable
Source: National Research Council
Although human cases of avian influenza to date have been rare, there is growing concern that an influenza pandemic may arise from the mutation of avian influenza strains and subsequent transmission among humans. On October 23, 2006, the Disasters Roundtable of the National Academies in cooperation with the Board on Population Health and Public Health Practice of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) convened a workshop on Citizen Engagement in Emergency Planning for a Flu Pandemic to explore the roles and needs of the citizenry in pandemic influenza preparedness planning. Panelists stressed the importance of citizen engagement in all stages of pandemic preparation and response. Topics of discussion included national and local preparedness, citizen education and cooperation, the importance of communication, and possible pandemic scenarios which highlighted key issues of citizen involvement. This report is a summary of that discussion.
Risk Maps for the Spread of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza in Poultry
Risk Maps for the Spread of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza in Poultry
Source: PLoS Computational Biology
Devastating epidemics of highly contagious animal diseases such as avian influenza, classical swine fever, and foot-and-mouth disease underline the need for improved understanding of the factors promoting the spread of these pathogens. Here the authors present a spatial analysis of the between-farm transmission of a highly pathogenic H7N7 avian influenza virus that caused a large epidemic in The Netherlands in 2003. The authors developed a method to estimate key parameters determining the spread of highly transmissible animal diseases between farms based on outbreak data. The method allows for the identification of high-risk areas for propagating spread in an epidemiologically underpinned manner. A central concept is the transmission kernel, which determines the probability of pathogen transmission from infected to uninfected farms as a function of interfarm distance. The authors show how an estimate of the transmission kernel naturally provides estimates of the critical farm density and local reproduction numbers, which allows one to evaluate the effectiveness of control strategies. For avian influenza, the analyses show that there are two poultry-dense areas in The Netherlands where epidemic spread is possible, and in which local control measures are unlikely to be able to halt an unfolding epidemic. In these regions an epidemic can only be brought to an end by the depletion of susceptible farms by infection or massive culling. The analyses provide an estimate of the spatial range over which highly pathogenic avian influenza viruses spread between farms, and emphasize that control measures aimed at controlling such outbreaks need to take into account the local density of farms.
April 19, 2007
Guidelines for Pandemic Emergency Preparedness Planning: A Road Map for Courts
Guidelines for Pandemic Emergency Preparedness Planning: A Road Map for Courts (PDF; 677 KB)
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance
To ensure a court effectively carries out its judicial functions during a pandemic outbreak, the court will need to plan how it will address all of the issues outlined in this report. As a first step, existing legal authority relating to public health matters should be analyzed to ensure there is adequate legal foundation
for any court actions.
April 18, 2007
Pandemic Influenza: Ethics, Law, and the Public’s Health
Pandemic Influenza: Ethics, Law, and the Public’s Health
Source: Georgetown Law Faculty Working Papers
Highly pathogenic Influenza (HPAI) has captured the close attention of policy makers who regard pandemic influenza as a national security threat. Although the prevalence is currently very low, recent evidence that the 1918 pandemic was caused by an avian influenza virus lends credence to the theory that current outbreaks could have pandemic potential. If the threat becomes a reality, massive loss of life and economic disruption would ensue. Therapeutic countermeasures (e.g., vaccines and antiviral medications) and public health interventions (e.g., infection control, social separation, and quarantine) form the two principal strategies for prevention and response, both of which present formidable legal and ethical challenges that have yet to receive sufficient attention. In part II, we examine the major medical countermeasures being being considered as an intervention for an influenza pandemic. In this section, we will evaluate the known effectiveness of these interventions and analyze the ethical claims relating to distributive justice in the allocation of scarce resources. In part III, we will discuss public health interventions, exploring the hard tradeoffs between population health on the one hand and personal (e.g., autonomy, privacy, and liberty) and economic (e.g., trade, tourism, and business) interests on the other. This section will focus on the ethical and human rights issues inherent in population-based interventions. Pandemics can be deeply socially divisive, and the political response to these issues not only impacts public health preparedness, but also reflects profoundly on the kind of society we aspire to be.
+ Full Paper (PDF; 651 KB)
The effect of public health measures on the 1918 influenza pandemic in U.S. cities
The effect of public health measures on the 1918 influenza pandemic in U.S. cities
Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
During the 1918 influenza pandemic, the U.S., unlike Europe, put considerable effort into public health interventions. There was also more geographic variation in the autumn wave of the pandemic in the U.S. compared with Europe, with some cities seeing only a single large peak in mortality and others seeing double-peaked epidemics. Here we examine whether differences in the public health measures adopted by different cities can explain the variation in epidemic patterns and overall mortality observed. We show that city-specific per-capita excess mortality in 1918 was significantly correlated with 1917 per-capita mortality, indicating some intrinsic variation in overall mortality, perhaps related to sociodemographic factors. In the subset of 23 cities for which we had partial data on the timing of interventions, an even stronger correlation was found between excess mortality and how early in the epidemic interventions were introduced. We then fitted an epidemic model to weekly mortality in 16 cities with nearly complete intervention-timing data and estimated the impact of interventions. The model reproduced the observed epidemic patterns well. In line with theoretical arguments, we found the time-limited interventions used reduced total mortality only moderately (perhaps 10-30%), and that the impact was often very limited because of interventions being introduced too late and lifted too early. San Francisco, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Kansas City had the most effective interventions, reducing transmission rates by up to 30-50%. Our analysis also suggests that individuals reactively reduced their contact rates in response to high levels of mortality during the pandemic.
+ Full Paper (PDF; 348 KB)
Pandemic Influenza: Ethics, Law, and the Public’s Health
Pandemic Influenza: Ethics, Law, and the Public’s Health
Source: Georgetown Law Faculty Working Papers
Highly pathogenic Influenza (HPAI) has captured the close attention of policy makers who regard pandemic influenza as a national security threat. Although the prevalence is currently very low, recent evidence that the 1918 pandemic was caused by an avian influenza virus lends credence to the theory that current outbreaks could have pandemic potential. If the threat becomes a reality, massive loss of life and economic disruption would ensue. Therapeutic countermeasures (e.g., vaccines and antiviral medications) and public health interventions (e.g., infection control, social separation, and quarantine) form the two principal strategies for prevention and response, both of which present formidable legal and ethical challenges that have yet to receive sufficient attention. In part II, we examine the major medical countermeasures being being considered as an intervention for an influenza pandemic. In this section, we will evaluate the known effectiveness of these interventions and analyze the ethical claims relating to distributive justice in the allocation of scarce resources. In part III, we will discuss public health interventions, exploring the hard tradeoffs between population health on the one hand and personal (e.g., autonomy, privacy, and liberty) and economic (e.g., trade, tourism, and business) interests on the other. This section will focus on the ethical and human rights issues inherent in population-based interventions. Pandemics can be deeply socially divisive, and the political response to these issues not only impacts public health preparedness, but also reflects profoundly on the kind of society we aspire to be.
+ Full Paper (PDF; 651 KB)
April 16, 2007
New Report Shows Increased Flood Risk from Global Warming Despite Billions Spent on Flood-Control Projects
New Report Shows Increased Flood Risk from Global Warming Despite Billions Spent on Flood-Control Projects
Source: Environmental Defense
The report shows how global warming is increasing flood risks around the country. In coastal areas, where half of the U.S. population lives, rising sea levels increase damage from storm surges. In the Atlantic, warming ocean temperatures have doubled the destructive potential of hurricanes and the number of Category 4 and Category 5 hurricanes over the last 30 years. Inland, global warming will lead to stronger storms and convert snow into rainfall, which likewise increases flooding. The new report focuses on a few vulnerable areas in particular.
April 14, 2007
Alternatives to the FEMA Trailer Parks: Lessons from Social Science Research
Alternatives to the FEMA Trailer Parks: Lessons from Social Science Research
Source: Urban Institute
More than 18 months after the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, thousands of low-income people remain in FEMA trailer parks. Social science research teaches us that clustering large numbers of vulnerable families in isolated, underserved communities is a recipe for disaster. Public policies should focus on providing meaningful, permanent housing choices in decent neighborhoods for the low-income families currently living in trailers. In addition, as long as some families remain in trailer communities, they need on-site services to counteract the damaging effects of isolation and distress.
+ Full Document (PDF; 32 KB)
Statement before the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management United States House of Representatives by Margery Austin Turner, The Urban Institute
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