The public health system plays a critical role in emergency preparedness and response. A major statewide or regional emergency could cause severe illness and/or injuries and fatalities. An emergency of great severity and magnitude requires the ability to rapidly activate rapid incident command, surveillance and communications systems, as well as a trained and available public health workforce ready to perform essential tasks.
While Connecticut has built and sustained essential public health capabilities to prepare for such events, the Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH) seeks to enhance the state’s ability to quickly mobilize and respond to public health emergencies through rapid funding support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretarial declared and non-declared public health emergencies.
DPH will use funds awarded through this cooperative agreement to support the surge needs of existing DPH programs responding to a significant public health emergency, including active planning and crisis response activities. DPH’s proposal would strengthen its capacity to respond in the event of a significant crisis in all six capability areas of the PHEP Logic Model: Strengthen Incident Management for Crisis Response, Jurisdictional Recovery, Biosurveillance, Information Management, Countermeasures and Mitigation, and Surge Management.
Such funding, should it be deemed necessary by the CDC, would complement capacity-building work supported by existing grant programs, such as the Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) and the Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity for Infectious Diseases (ELC) cooperative agreements.
