In Connecticut and Massachusetts, NEPHTC Trains Community Health Center Staff for Post-Disaster Response

“Public health has a responsibility to ensure that the medical care system is prepared to deal with emergencies, particularly primary care clinics serving vulnerable populations. To strengthen their ability to respond, we developed a new pilot program with community health centers to provide them with training on using the incident command system in their emergency plans.”  – Kathi Traugh, Yale School of Public Health

Whether it is reacting to a live shooter in their clinic or responding to an infectious disease emergency, community health center staff perform vital services for the neighborhoods in which they operate. The training program Traugh developed had teams of center staff updating their emergency response plans for different types of emergencies by using publicly available tools from the healthcare incidence command system. During the training, teams shared what they learned from developing these detailed plans, including challenges and innovative solutions. To date, the program has trained 67 people from clinics across Connecticut and Massachusetts. “Participants learned by doing and learned much from their colleagues at other centers,” Traugh reports.

NEPHTC offered the project-based incident command system training to community health center teams in Massachusetts and Connecticut in spring 2017.  It will be offering it in Maine and Rhode Island in the coming year.

This project is/was supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under grant number and title for grant amount (specify grant number, title, total award amount and percentage financed with nongovernmental sources). This information or content and conclusions are those of the author and should not be construed as the official position or policy of, nor should any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS or the U.S. Government.