Finely Crafted Tools for Your Preparedness Tool Belt

Posted on: June 6 2010 - 12:22pm

Local health jurisdictions are a fountain of creative ideas for emergency preparedness. The trick, of course, is turning those ideas into effective programs. Ever-tightening public health budgets allow very little wiggle room for LHDs to test new solutions. So one of NACCHO’s primary responsibilities is to monitor local and national trends, and maintain a repository of best practices and tools. APC toolkits are one vehicle for disseminating best practices. Toolkits are developed by LHDs that have been designated as Advanced Practice Centers (APC) by NACCHO.

NACCHO takes toolkit evaluation very seriously. Preparedness toolkits are evaluated in four different ways. After the toolkit concept and scope pass an initial screening by NACCHO, and LHDs develop a draft of the product, the toolkits are reviewed by subject matter experts or community representatives during the development, and tested in the field. Feedback on the toolkit is then incorporated into the final product before NACCHO conducts another assessment. The toolkit is only published once the final stamp of approval is given.

What does NACCHO look for when it evaluates toolkits? NACCHO monitors preparedness needs across the country, so the toolkits must fill a gap. (Building a complex system of underground bunkers for the off-chance of a colossal meteor shower may be super cool, but it’s not very practical.) Each of the approximately 2,800 LHDs is different—some are located 50 miles from a large city, and others are home to over a million residents. Some LHDs work in vastly different planning environments than their peers. Each toolkit is designed to be flexible enough for use in a variety of jurisdictions.

The rigorous evaluation process pays off. During the spring of 2009, for example, several toolkits from Seattle & King County’s APC were used both in King County and by other jurisdictions to respond to the H1N1 flu. Several jurisdictions requested the “Hello, How May I Help You?” toolkit for public information hotlines during the response. No Ordinary Flu, a comic book about the horrors of the 1918 pandemic flu that is translated into Spanish, Vietnamese, and 18 other languages, was used to educate people about what all the fuss was about. (It’s also the bestselling publication in NACCHO’s bookstore, according to the June 2010 issue of NACCHO Dispatch). Our work with homeless providers, the Influenza Pandemic Planning Guide for Homeless and Housing Service Providers (a tool in the Equity in Emergency Preparedness toolkit) was cited in the National Healthcare for the Homeless Council’s H1N1 resource page.

So unless your jurisdiction is planning for that meteor shower, check out the APC toolkits. There’s a wealth of expertise on tap to take any public health preparedness program to the next level.

(Preliminary sketch from the forthcoming “Survivor Tales” toolkit. Community representatives that evaluated the product suggested rewording the phrase “hunker down” since colloquialisms are difficult to translate into other languages.)

Tagged with: APC , NACCHO , Toolkits , Survior Tales , emergency preparedness , preparedness , tools , best practices , Advanced Practice Center