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A Citizen’s Eye View of Public Preparedness

Center For Biosecurity’s “Resilient American Communities” Report Offers Ideas For Improving Local Public Preparedness

May 21st, 2010 · No Comments

In December of  2009, the Center for Biosecurity of UPMC held a conference in Washington, D.C., “Resilient American Communities: Progress In Practice And In Policy”. The aim was “to apply state-of-the-art knowledge of resilience to the design of federal policies that will strengthen local communities and their environments to withstand disasters, epidemics, and terrorism.”

Co-sponsors included the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, the Natural Hazards Center of the University of Colorado and the Alfred E. Sloan Foundation. Among the 140 participants were U.S. government officials, congressional staff, policy analysts, scholars, public health and emergency management practitioners, heads of private and nonprofit initiatives to reduce disaster risk, and members of the media.

I was excited to participate in the event but unfortunately had my leukemia relapse the week before and therefore could not attend. I did, however, want to post the meeting’s output which went on the Center for Biosecurity’s website earlier this year while my blog was on hiatus (so some of you may have already seen it already).

A 2-page conference brief, prepared by the Center’s Monica Schoch-Spana, listed the “Major Themes And Objectives”:

* A resilient community has the capacity to anticipate, withstand, and rebound from an extreme event with minimal damage and disruption.

* The nation needs a rational approach to collecting information on disaster-related losses and gauging the value of investments in resilience.

* The federal government should invest more money in pre-event hazard mitigation.

* A resilience certification program could inspire more communities to adopt creative disaster mitigation approaches.

* Partnerships beyond the bounds of the traditional disaster establishment strengthen resilience.

* Public engagement in key policy decisions improves emergency planning and empowers community members.

* Disadvantaged populations require enhanced protections from the disproportionate impact of extreme events.

The full report is definitely worth reading for anyone interested in community preparedness. All the presentations are available on video here.

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Tags: Preparedness Events · Preparedness Ideas

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