Evidence-Based Practice for Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response
Evidence-Based Practice for Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response

Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2020-11-28

Total Pages: 501

ISBN-13: 0309670381

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When communities face complex public health emergencies, state local, tribal, and territorial public health agencies must make difficult decisions regarding how to effectively respond. The public health emergency preparedness and response (PHEPR) system, with its multifaceted mission to prevent, protect against, quickly respond to, and recover from public health emergencies, is inherently complex and encompasses policies, organizations, and programs. Since the events of September 11, 2001, the United States has invested billions of dollars and immeasurable amounts of human capital to develop and enhance public health emergency preparedness and infrastructure to respond to a wide range of public health threats, including infectious diseases, natural disasters, and chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear events. Despite the investments in research and the growing body of empirical literature on a range of preparedness and response capabilities and functions, there has been no national-level, comprehensive review and grading of evidence for public health emergency preparedness and response practices comparable to those utilized in medicine and other public health fields. Evidence-Based Practice for Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response reviews the state of the evidence on PHEPR practices and the improvements necessary to move the field forward and to strengthen the PHEPR system. This publication evaluates PHEPR evidence to understand the balance of benefits and harms of PHEPR practices, with a focus on four main areas of PHEPR: engagement with and training of community-based partners to improve the outcomes of at-risk populations after public health emergencies; activation of a public health emergency operations center; communication of public health alerts and guidance to technical audiences during a public health emergency; and implementation of quarantine to reduce the spread of contagious illness.

Learning from SARS
Learning from SARS

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2004-04-26

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13: 0309182158

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The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in late 2002 and 2003 challenged the global public health community to confront a novel epidemic that spread rapidly from its origins in southern China until it had reached more than 25 other countries within a matter of months. In addition to the number of patients infected with the SARS virus, the disease had profound economic and political repercussions in many of the affected regions. Recent reports of isolated new SARS cases and a fear that the disease could reemerge and spread have put public health officials on high alert for any indications of possible new outbreaks. This report examines the response to SARS by public health systems in individual countries, the biology of the SARS coronavirus and related coronaviruses in animals, the economic and political fallout of the SARS epidemic, quarantine law and other public health measures that apply to combating infectious diseases, and the role of international organizations and scientific cooperation in halting the spread of SARS. The report provides an illuminating survey of findings from the epidemic, along with an assessment of what might be needed in order to contain any future outbreaks of SARS or other emerging infections.

Until Proven Safe
Until Proven Safe

Author: Nicola Twilley

Publisher: MCD

Published: 2021-07-20

Total Pages: 211

ISBN-13: 0374715335

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Geoff Manaugh and Nicola Twilley have been researching quarantine since long before the COVID-19 pandemic. With Until Proven Safe, they bring us a book as compelling as it is definitive, not only urgent reading for social-distanced times but also an up-to-the-minute investigation of the interplay of forces–––biological, political, technological––that shape our modern world. Quarantine is our most powerful response to uncertainty: it means waiting to see if something hidden inside us will be revealed. It is also one of our most dangerous, operating through an assumption of guilt. In quarantine, we are considered infectious until proven safe. Until Proven Safe tracks the history and future of quarantine around the globe, chasing the story of emergency isolation through time and space—from the crumbling lazarettos of the Mediterranean, built to contain the Black Death, to an experimental Ebola unit in London, and from the hallways of the CDC to closed-door simulations where pharmaceutical execs and epidemiologists prepare for the outbreak of a novel coronavirus. But the story of quarantine ranges far beyond the history of medical isolation. In Until Proven Safe, the authors tour a nuclear-waste isolation facility beneath the New Mexican desert, see plants stricken with a disease that threatens the world’s wheat supply, and meet NASA’s Planetary Protection Officer, tasked with saving Earth from extraterrestrial infections. They also introduce us to the corporate tech giants hoping to revolutionize quarantine through surveillance and algorithmic prediction. We live in a disorienting historical moment that can feel both unprecedented and inevitable; Until Proven Safe helps us make sense of our new reality through a thrillingly reported, thought-provoking exploration of the meaning of freedom, governance, and mutual responsibility.

Communicating Risk in Public Health Emergencies
Communicating Risk in Public Health Emergencies

Author: World Health Organization

Publisher:

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789241550208

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"During public health emergencies, people need to know what health risks they face, and what actions they can take to protect their health and lives. Accurate information provided early, often, and in languages and channels that people understand, trust and use, enables individuals to make choices and take actions to protect themselves, their families and communities from threatening health hazards." -- Publisher's description.

The Quarantine Atlas
The Quarantine Atlas

Author: Laura Bliss

Publisher: Hachette UK

Published: 2022-04-19

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 0762478136

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The Quarantine Atlas is a poignant and deeply human collection of more than 65 homemade maps created by people around the globe that reveal how the coronavirus pandemic has transformed our physical and emotional worlds, in ways both universal and unique. Along with eight original essays, it is a vivid celebration of wayfinding through a crisis that irrevocably altered the way we experience our environment. In April 2020, Bloomberg CityLab journalists Laura Bliss and Jessica Lee Martin asked readers to submit homemade maps of their lives during the coronavirus pandemic. The response was illuminating and inspiring. The 400+ maps and accompanying stories received served as windows into what individuals around the world were experiencing during the crisis and its resonant social consequences. Collectively, these works showed how coronavirus has transformed the places we live, and our relationships to them. In The Quarantine Atlas, Bliss distills these stunning submissions and pairs them with essays by journalists and authors, as well as notes from the original mapmakers. The result is an enduring visual record of this unprecedented moment in human history. It is also a celebration of the act of mapping and the ways maps can help us connect and heal from our shared experience.