Websites of Interest
Resources last updated July 28, 2008 - Links last verified July 22, 2008
This section provides links to web sites, articles, documents, and reports that may be of interest to you. If you have links that you would like for us to consider including on this site, please contact us. (Please note: Inclusion of links on this site does not necessarily indicate endorsement or agreement by The Litaker Group of the information contained in these links.)
Hospital Preparedness
- Emergency Preparedness: States Are Planning for Medical Surge, but Could Benefit from Shared Guidance for Allocating Scarce Medical Resources. A report from the Government Accountability Office (July 2008). http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d08668.pdf
- Report from the U.S. Congress entitled: Hospital Emergency Surge Capacity: Not Ready for the "Predictable Surprise" (May 2008) http://oversight.house.gov/documents/20080505101837.pdf
- Hospitals Safe from Disasters Project - A project of the Pan American Health Organization. This website contains many resources - including policy and planning documents to support hospital preparedness activities. www.safehospitals.info.
Public Health Preparedness
- The Texas Health and Human Services Agency created an Emergency Management Council. Circular C-208 issues April 11, 2008 discusses this Council: www.hhs.state.tx.us/news/circulars/C-028.shtml
- Grant opportunities from the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration are available online at: http://www.hrsa.gov/grants/default.htm
- The Johns Hopkins University Critical Event Preparedness Response office has created and released a tool to help hospitals prepare for medical surge events. This tool, the Electronic Mass Casualty Assessment and Planning Scenarios computer program allows users to calculate casualties based on inputed data. It is available at: www.hopkins-cepar.org/EMCAPS/EMCAPS.html.
- The U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) released a report in April 2005 entitled: Altered Standards of Care in Mass Casualty Events. This report provides a framework on deliverying healthcare when resources are limited. It is available at: http://www.ahrq.gov/research/altstand/altstand.pdf
- The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healtcare Organizations released a report entitled: Surge Hospitals: Providing Safe Care in Emergencies in 2006. The report is available for download in PDF.
- The Trust for America's Health released their 2006 report of a state-by-state look at public health preparedness. It can be accessed at: http://healthyamericans.org/reports/bioterror06/BioTerrorReport2006.pdf
- ProMed-Mail is a program of the International Society for Infectious Diseases and is available at: www.promedmail.org. Reports of emerging infections can be found online or delivered to your email free on a regularly scheduled basis.
Isolation and Quarantine
- Model state emergency health powers act: Planning for and response to bioterrorism and naturally occurring infectious diseases
Public Health Emergency Exercise Toolkit
- Columbia University Public Health Emergency Exercise Toolkit
Pandemic Influenza
- Guidance on Allocating and Targeting Pandemic Influenza Vaccine - HHS / DHS - July 23, 2008. The U.S. Government is working to expand domestic influenza vaccine production capacity to be able to produce pandemic influenza vaccines for the entire population within six months of a pandemic declaration. However, at the beginning of a pandemic, the scarcity of pre-pandemic and pandemic influenza vaccine will require that the limited supply be allocated or prioritized for distribution and administration. The government has developed this document, which provides strong guidance to states, territories, and tribes for the allocation of limited supplies of vaccine, and describes the scientific and ethical framework for how this guidance was developed. http://www.pandemicflu.gov/vaccine/allocationguidance.pdf
- The Great Pandemic Flu of 1918. This website was created by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to help us "learn more about the pandemic, along with the Nation's health and the medical care system and how they were affected." http://1918.pandemicflu.gov
- Preparing for the Next Pandemic Foreign Affairs July / August 2005
Pandemic Influenza and Ethical Considerations
- Stand on Guard for Thee: Ethical Considerations in Preparedness Planning for Pandemic Influenza http://www.nciom.org/projects/flu_pandemic/5-03-06_Thompson.pdf
- Medical Countermeasures for pandemic influenza: ethics and law New England Journal of Medicine 2006; 295:554-556.
- Conscientious objection in medicine. BMJ 2006; 332:294-297.
- Ethical Issues in Pandemic Flu http://www.hhs.gov/nvpo/meetings/jun2005/ethicswg.ppt
- Ethical hazards in pandemic flu planning and response www.ualbanycphp.org/GRS/eventCurrent.cfm?id=65
- Joint Centre for Bioethics, University of Toronto. Stand on Guard for Thee
www.utoronto.ca/jcb/home/documents/pandemic.pdf
- Homeland Security Council. Implementation Plan for the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza http://www.whitehouse.gov/homeland/nspi_implementation.pdf
Pediatric Disaster Resources
- Pediatric Terrorism and Disaster Preparedness: A Resource for Pediatricians. A publication by the American Academy of Pediatrics for the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research. http://www.ahrq.gov/research/pedprep/pedresource.pdf
- The Pediatrician and Disaster Preparedness Technical Report Pediatrics Vol. 117 No. 2 February 2006, pp. e340-e362 http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/117/2/e340
- The Pediatrician and Disaster Preparedness Policy Statement Pediatrics Vol. 117 No. 2 February 2006, pp. 560-565 http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/117/2/560
- Hurricane Katrina, Children, and Pediatric Heroes: Hands-on Stories by and of Our Colleagues Helping Families During the Most Costly Natural Disaster in US History Special Supplement
Pediatrics Vol. 117 No. 5 May 2006, pp. S355-S460
(Note: The link below takes you to the special supplement, where you will find the table of contents for articles in this issue)
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/vol117/issue5/index.shtml#SUPPLS2