Workforce Activation

Planning

Developing a Public Health Workforce Activation Response Plan is a dynamic process that must be responsive and flexible within the system that it resides. Our Plan and this Toolkit is in continuous development. We look forward to adding content and tools as our local planning advances, as well as incorporating feedback and products from other jurisdictions to ensure that this Toolkit constitutes the broadest possible resource.

Define an emergency or disaster - For the purposes of this guide, an emergency/disaster is an event such as disease or environmental hazard that endangers the public health. During an emergency, the Public Health Director/Health Officer will activate the Area Command Center (ACC). The ACC will oversee and coordinate the Emergency Support Function 8 (ESF-8) response to the emergency.

Identification of Mission Critical Services, Functions and Programs - This section discusses the categorizing of the levels of service provided by Public Health – Seattle & King County and the procedures for shutting down those lines of service (or not) to support a emergency or disaster response. These levels of service are determined for the department based on King County Government priorities and other criteria. For further details on service prioritization please see our Business Continuity Toolkit.

Priority One: Must be maintained at all cost

• Functions that address immediate life/safety threats
• Constitutionally required functions
• Maintenance of County Government leadership line of succession (LOS)

Priorities Two – Four: Are based on the amount of time they could be suspended without seriously jeopardizing the public's health and safety.

• Priority Two = 24 hours
• Priority Three = 72 hours
• Priority Four = more than 72 hours

Determining mission critical services, functions and programs is challenging, based on evolving criteria and subject to real world events at the time (including response demands).The following considerations were used when assessing where these services, functions and programs fall within these last three levels of service:

• Functions that protect the public’s health through risk communication and education
• Services that reduce the spread of acute illness
• Statutory obligations
• Revenue generating and fee based services
• Grant funded services