Project Abstract Summary:
Maine Department of Health and Human Services, Maine Center for Disease Control
Public Health Emergency Response: Cooperative Agreement for Emergency Response:
Public Health Crisis Response CDC-RFA-TP22-2201
Organizational Overview:
The Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) Program is organizationally located within the Division of Public Health Operations at the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Maine CDC), the State’s public health agency. The Maine CDC is the lead state agency responsible for the planning, coordination and response to public health emergencies, including bioterrorism events and infectious disease outbreaks such as pandemic influenza.
Purpose:
Maine has developed our work plan based on an infectious disease scenario that introduces a novel infectious agent with multiple routes of transmission and high attack and mortality rates into both humans and animals. Our work plan activities will focus on the implementation of initial incident command capabilities and early crisis response activities during the first 120 days of the emergency. Our response activities will include emergency operations center activation, threat assessments, call center activation, NIMS/ICS training, and exercises. The work plan will also focus on response activities after the initial 120 days and are intended to strengthen biosurveillance systems and laboratory testing capabilities, strengthen information management to ensure a well-coordinated emergency information system, strengthen medical countermeasures to ensure antivirals, vaccines, ancillary medical supplies can be administered quickly, and strengthen surge management to support our healthcare systems to provide population monitoring at shelters, deployment of medical supply and equipment to alternate care systems, and providing support to family assistance and family reunification centers.
Short and Long-Term Outcomes:
Maine CDC’s overall response strategy for this NOFO has been developed using experience obtained from real-world responses such as the 2009-2010 H1N1 pandemic, Ebola, and Zika and COVID-19. Our short-term and long-term activities, and related outputs, are in alignment with the CDC-RFA-TP17-1701 Logic Model and will enable Maine CDC to achieve the following outcomes:
• Timely assessment and sharing of essential elements of information about the emergency,
• Earliest possible identification and investigation of an incident with public health impact,
• Timely implementation of intervention and control measures,
• Timely communication of situational awareness and risk information,
• Continuity of emergency operations management throughout the surge of an emergency or incident,
• Timely coordination and support of response activities with partners, and
• Continuous learning and improvements are systematic.
The result of our preparedness strategies under this NOFO will ultimately be to prevent or reduce morbidity and mortality from public health incidents whose scale, rapid onset, or unpredictability overwhelms the public health and health care systems and to ensure the timely recovery of public health and health care systems to pre-incident levels.
