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CDC: Public health disaster response capability better since 9/11

Emergency Management Alert, February 29, 2008

Are public health departments better able to respond to disasters than they were before 9/11?

The CDC thinks so. In its new report Public Health Preparedness: Mobilizing State by State, it says that public health departments "can better detect and investigate diseases because of improvements in the public health workforce and in data collection and reporting systems."

Selected findings:

 The number of epidemiologists in public health departments working in emergency response has doubled from 115 in 2001 to 232 in 2006.

 The number of users for the Epidemic Information Exchange (Epi-X), a secure CDC-based communications system that helps track disease outbreaks, has increased to 4,646 in 2006, up from 890 in 2001. Users are primarily from state and local health departments (75%).

 All state public health departments now can receive and evaluate reports of urgent health threats 24/7/365, whereas in 1999 only 12 could do so. Previously, it was often difficult for clinicians to reach a public health professional after normal work hours.

The report was released February 20 by the CDC's Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response (COTPER). The CDC says it highlights the progress that has been made in state and local preparedness and response, identifies preparedness challenges facing public health departments, and outlines CDC's efforts to address those challenges.

The report's purpose is to increase accountability regarding the country's investment in preparedness activities. It presents national data as well as state-specific snapshots for all 50 states and four directly-funded localities: Chicago, Los Angeles County, New York City, and Washington, DC.

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