Thursday, December 26, 2024
12/26/2024
Abstract When disaster strikes, public health practitioners are at the frontlines. They require effective and evidence-based public health emergency preparedness and response (PHEPR) strategies and interventions to protect their communities. However, recent disinvestment in PHEPR science has limited the generation of evidence to guide their practice. Indeed, the evidence that is available has been criticized for being anecdotal, uncoordinated, and outdated. Evidence-based strategies and interventions (EBSIs) that have been developed are highly contextual, resulting in challenges to their uptake in new contexts. Moreover, information about these EBSIs often exists in the academic literature, inaccessible to practitioners without costly subscriptions to academic journals, and is often hard to interpret for relevance in practical application. Placing responsibility to identify and adapt EBSIs on practitioners, who are under-resourced and face competing priorities, has created unnecessary burden and has yielded limited success. Region 10, which includes states of Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington, along with the 272 federally recognized tribes whose traditional and/or reservation lands are within their geographic boundaries, faces unique hazards compared to the rest of the country. In addition to looming threats of geotechnical hazards with potential to cause widespread destruction (e.g., earthquakes, volcanos, tsunamis, and landslides), climate-sensitive hazards (e.g, flooding, extreme heat, and wildfires) are creating annual public health emergencies. Region 10 has the greatest number of federally recognized tribes (272) of all Health and Human Services (HHS) regions, and a high degree of rurality across all four component states. Rural and tribal communities’ capacity constraints, including those resulting from systematic exclusion of tribal governments in preparedness funding and supports, and unique worldviews and cultures necessitate targeted and context-specific EBSIs, as well as approaches to support implementation. A regionally-based approach presents an opportunity to improve PHEPR evidence aligned with practitioner priorities. Accordingly, we propose to establish the Northwest Center for Evidence-Based Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response to: -Promote coordination and collaboration among Region 10 state, tribal and local health departments and their partners to support evidence-based PHEPR practice; -Improve the availability and uptake of culturally and community appropriate PHEPR EBSIs in Region 10; and- -Enhance the capabilities and capacities of Region 10 PHEPR practitioners to implement evidence-based PHEPR practice. We will work alongside PHEPR practitioners and implementation partners from state, local, and tribal health departments, healthcare coalitions and organizations, intertribal organizations, emergency management and response partners, and community-based organizations to collaboratively select, adapt, create, implement, evaluate, and disseminate PHEPR EBSIs. Through enhanced regional coordination and collaboration, we will co-create EBSIs that meet the unique contextual needs of Region 10 communities, thereby increasing their adoption and sustainability. Our long-term vision is to improve equitable health outcomes and community resilience before, during and after a disaster by bolstering the capability and capacity of state, tribal and local health departments and their partners to implement appropriate and effective PHEPR EBSIs. In addition to our proposal for a Region 10 Center (Component B, Strategy 1b-4), we also include proposals in response to Component C (Strategy 5), D.1 (Strategy 6), D.2 (Strategy 7), D.3 (Strategy 8), D.4 (Strategy 9), E.1 (Strategy 10), and E.2 (Strategy 11).
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).