Members of the UC Irvine-based Center for Disaster Medical Sciences geared up for the crisis.

Kristi Koenig, UC Irvine

As Eastern seaboard states from the Carolinas to Maine prepared for the onslaught of the hurricane-force storm Irene, members of the Center for Disaster Medical Sciences geared up for the crisis.

The UC Irvine-based organization is closely monitoring the storm, which will affect millions of Americans and strain public health response resources.

CDMS members, many of whom are engaged in national preparedness, will deploy should assistance be needed.  Among them:

• Dr. Ken Miller serves as medical officer for the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Incident Support Team.  In addition, he is the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) Assistant Deputy Chief Medical Officer for Region IX and medical advisor to the Orange County Chapter of the American Red Cross.

• Dr. Chip Schreiber developed the PsySTART Rapid Mental Health Triage and Incident Management System, which is in use by the American Red Cross.  He is ready to deploy with the US Public Health Service should assistance be needed.

• In addition to Dr. Schreiber, several other CDMS leaders are also members of the CA-1 Disaster Medical Assistance Team (Orange County DMAT), including Darlene Bradley (operations chief and chief nursing officer) and Sherlene Stepp (supervisory nurse).  The DMAT could be activated if help is needed.

The CDMS trains fellows to be prepared for all types of disasters (both from the U.S. and internationally) in the Emergency Medical Services and Disaster Medical Sciences Fellowship.

“Hurricane Irene is a good reminder that we need to be prepared for all types of disasters in California,” says CDMS Director Kristi L. Koenig, MD. “Being ready to care for yourself and your family for at least 72 hours is imperative—whether it’s for a hurricane or for an earthquake.”

See www.ready.gov or http://cms.calema.ca.gov/preparednesshome.aspx for tips on how to prepare for a disaster.

UC Irvine expert:

Dr. Kristi L. Koenig – professor of emergency medicine, director of public health preparedness and director of the Center for Disaster Medical Sciences at the UC Irvine Medical Center – has expertise in disaster medicine, public health preparedness, emergency management and emergency medical services. She previously served for more than five years as principal advisor on emergency management and disaster medicine to the Office of the Under Secretary for Health in the Department of Veterans, Affairs. The co-author of the textbook, Koenig and Schultz’s Disaster Medicine, she can discuss public health and emergency medicine responses to hurricanes and powerful tropical storms. Koenig can be reached by email at: kkoenig@uci.edu.

John Blossom honored for work in UCTV series offering disaster preparedness information.

UCSF's John Blossom and UCTV's Lynn Burnstan

As director of the California Area Health Education Center (AHEC), UCSF Fresno‘s Dr. John Blossom knows the value of reaching large audiences with essential information. So when the opportunity arose to partner with UCTV on a video series offering expert disaster preparedness information to health care providers and the general public, he lept at the chance, investing his time, expertise and newly tapped on-screen talent as host of the four-part series “Disaster Preparedness for Health Professionals.”

The series premiered on UCTV in October 2009 and, with UCTV’s large footprint reaching 23 million households nationwide on satellite and cable, as well as millions more through its website, YouTube and iTunes channels, audiences in every corner of the state, the country and the world had ready access to vital emergency response information covering natural disasters, chemical and biological agents, pandemic influenza and emerging infections, and managing disaster volunteers. With almost 800,000 combined online views to date, the information has clearly been well received.

But last week it was Blossom who was on the receiving end of some welcome attention when he took possession of his Gold Aurora Award in the General Instruction category for the “Disaster Volunteerism” installment.  The Aurora Awards is a prestigious international competition designed to recognize excellence in the film and video industries, specifically targeting products, programs and commercials that would not normally have the opportunity to compete on a national level.

Read more

The U.S. Congress recently held a hearing titled “The Crisis in Haiti: Are We Moving Fast Enough?”

Those who visit the quake-devastated Caribbean nation have no trouble answering that question.

“No images I’ve seen on TV can compare to what I saw in Haiti,” said UC Santa Barbara professor Claudine Michel, who visited her homeland in May. “In terms of daily life and daily survival, people are suffering. They’re living in tents and not having much. Rebuilding is a monumental task.”

Michel will return to Haiti this month with a group of students and faculty determined to put University of California expertise to work for the Haitian people. On Aug. 14, 21 representatives of the student-founded UC Haiti Initiative will travel to the island nation for a 10-day fact-finding visit. The group, which includes 13 students, will visit Port-au-Prince, Jacmel, Mirebalais and Leogane, the epicenter of the 7.0 temblor that struck on Jan. 12. They will meet with government officials, non-governmental organization (NGO) leaders and community members. Their goal is to find a Haitian community to work with on specific recovery projects that can be sustained by the people themselves.

[View related information: UC Haiti Initiative on Facebook, UC Haiti Initiative on Twitter, UC Haiti Relief on Facebook]

Nicolas Pascal, the student executive director of the UC Haiti Initiative, visited the disaster-stricken nation with Michel in May. That visit further inspired his commitment to corralling UC expertise into aiding Haiti’s recovery.

“I was witnessing unmitigated, severe trauma,” Pascal said of the survival challenges Haitians still face seven months after the quake. “We’re looking forward to finding a small community where we can most effectively pursue our goal of providing assistance on Haitian terms to our Haitian brothers and sisters.”

Last April, Pascal helped organize the UC Haiti Spring Summit at UC San Francisco. More than 200 students, faculty and staff from all the UC campuses attended with a goal of moving beyond good intentions and the small campus fundraising events that followed the quake.

At the summit, participants created six focus areas: agriculture, engineering and technology, economics and law, arts and culture, education and psychological assistance and health care. Each group has been meeting to craft ways in which UC expertise in those disciplines can best be deployed on the ground in Haiti.

Read more and view slideshow

UC Irvine doctors Kristi L. Koenig and Carl H. Schultz are not just world-renowned experts in disaster medicine. They have, quite literally, written the book on the subject.

Published last fall by Cambridge University Press in association with the American College of Emergency Physicians, Koenig & Schultz’s Disaster Medicine: Comprehensive Principles & Practices is intended for anyone who manages or trains people involved in disaster response, including public health officials, paramedics, hospital staff and medical school students.

“Emergency responses to Hurricane Katrina and recent earthquakes in Haiti and Chile emphasize the need for expertise in disaster management,” says Koenig , UCI’s director of public health preparedness. “It’s an emerging science, and up until now, there have been no comprehensive texts on it.”

Their book is being well received. “This mix of operational, academic and governmental influences results in chapters that are incredibly detailed and fresh, with current developments in this field,” writes Dr. Scott R. Lillibridge, executive director of Texas A&M’s National Center for Emergency Medical Preparedness & Response.

The publication comes amid debate over the way medical care is delivered during disasters. Prompted by the recent H1N1 scare, the prospect of a catastrophic earthquake in California, and this month’s attempted car bombing in New York’s Times Square, caregivers, ethicists and local, state and national public health officials are re-examining emergency response systems.

“The big issue is how to allocate scarce resources,” says Koenig. “In a truly catastrophic event, we won’t have the resources to save everyone, so we need policies and procedures governing crisis care that will maximize benefit to the affected population.”

This requires a shift in attitude and an agreement on basic terminology. “Crisis standard of care” – the phrase adopted by the federal Institute of Medicine – was coined by Koenig, Schultz and their colleague Dr. Tareg A. Bey to describe emergency guidelines when resources are scarce.

“The usual standard of care is based on doing everything possible for the individual,” says Schultz , UCI’s director of disaster medical services. “But what’s the standard during a widespread disaster?”

He and Koenig want to see a uniform approach to resource management under such circumstances. They believe, for example, that after an earthquake, all Orange County hospitals should offer similarly injured patients the same treatment.

“Problems occur when you leave it up to each site to determine how to ration its resources,” Schultz says. Discussion of this issue will continue within the public health community until a consensus emerges.

Read more

In 1994, after the fires were finally out and emergency crews had left, Cal State Northridge was in shambles. The San Fernando Valley campus had been near ground zero of the magnitude 6.7 earthquake, leaving shaken administrators, faculty and staff with one question: “What now?”

All the campus buildings had been rendered unusable. Paper student records couldn’t be accessed. One open-sided tent was erected to house administrative functions. And the campus was in the middle of its January registration process, which was accomplished only after computer tapes were rescued from a badly damaged building and sent to Cal State Fresno for processing. “We didn’t even know who our students were, other than the ones we knew by name,” one bewildered administrator said at the time.

Could such a post-disaster nightmare occur here? UCLA’s Tara Brown and Wic Ware are working to take the desperation and panic out of “What now?” in the event that operations come to a sudden standstill anywhere on campus. While an earthquake, fire or flu pandemic are an obvious emergency, even a department-level disaster such as the sudden loss of a key staffer or supplier could cause big trouble.

Brown, a business continuity planner in UCLA’s Office of Risk Management, and Ware, her counterpart in the UCLA Health System, have been working for months on an initiative to help the campus plan for the unplanned. Every campus department and unit in the UCLA Health System, including the two hospitals and the Faculty Practice Groups, will be asked to identify its critical functions, needs and key resources, and then to file a plan on how these functions can continue in event of an emergency.

So far, four campus units at UCLA have completed their plans — Student Legal Services, the Bruin Resource Center, the School of Dentistry and the Office of Insurance and Risk Management. In the UCLA Health System, five units have completed the process —  the Nutrition Department-Westwood, Laundry and Linen Service, the Pfleger Liver Institute and General Surgery Consultation Suite, the Children’s Health Center, and the One West Neurological Research and Rehabilitation Unit.

“Continuity planning is all about what you need to do to continue operating after the emergency is over,” said Brown, after life safety issues have been taken care of. Originally developed and implemented by the private sector, continuity planning is now also being embraced by nonprofits and governmental entities, especially in the aftermath of 9-11 and Hurricane Katrina.

“Put another way — no matter what happens today, it’s to be able to do tomorrow what you did yesterday,” said Dean Malilay, director of the Office of Insurance and Risk Management.

“What we’re aiming to do is to create shadow operational plans for departments which facilitate continuation of our mission of providing leading-edge patient care, research and education,” Ware said. “We go into each department and ask, ‘What are your essential functions? What do you rely on most in terms of human resources, space, IT, utilities, and equipment and supplies? If you lose your space, can you quickly set up shop someplace else? If there’s a massive electrical failure, do you have a good backup paper system in place?’

“The buzz words,” Ware said, “are ‘redundancy’ and ‘resilience.’”

All UC general campuses and two UC medical centers are also going through the continuity planning process, using a UC Berkeley-developed software tool called UC Ready. UC Berkeley started continuity planning, said Brown, because it was concerned about an earthquake fault line that runs goalpost-to-goalpost beneath its football stadium. “Once Berkeley started the process,” Brown said, “they realized they had to do more than just physically survive the risk. They had to figure out how they would continue to teach, to do research and provide public services.”

UC Ready — which Brown dubbed “the Turbo Tax of planning” — takes users step-by-step through a series of questions about the department’s operations, its resources and an action plan of things that can be done to minimize operational downtime when emergencies occur. The software includes analytical functions that, for instance, help a department determine its most critical operations and determine scenarios if one is disrupted. UC Ready also enables users to create practical documents such as lists of departments they depend on and rosters of staff who can work online from home.

Read more

As the impact from the devastating 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti on Jan. 12 continues to unfold, the UCSF community is reminded of the critical need to take steps to prepare for and respond to temblors.

In fact, January proved to be a busy month for earthquakes; five significant earthquakes have occurred since Jan. 7, 2010, when the San Francisco Bay Area was struck by a 4.1-magnitude earthquake, according to the US Geological Survey’s earthquake Web page.

Matthew Springer, PhD, an associate professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology, is again conducting earthquake preparedness talks for faculty, staff and students beginning today (Monday, Feb. 1.)

Springer has delivered these lectures at UCSF as a public service for the past two years and posts useful information on how to become better prepared for earthquakes on his Web site.

Here is the full schedule of his upcoming earthquake preparedness talks:

• Monday, Feb. 1:  Parnassus, Health Sciences West, room 303, 4 p.m.
• Friday, Feb. 5:  Mission Bay, Rock Hall, room 102, noon
• Monday, Feb. 22:  Laurel Heights, room 263, noon
• Wednesday, March 10:  2300 Harrison St, room 243 A/B. 10 a.m.  (UC ID required)
• Thursday, March 25:  Mount Zion, 2340 Sutter, Lurie Seminar Room, 11 a.m.
• Thursday, April 1:  Parnassus, Health Sciences West, room 302, noon
• Friday, April 2:  Mission Bay, Rock Hall, room 102, 10 a.m.
• Wednesday, June 9:  San Francisco General Hospital, Building 3, room 505, noon (pick up phone on 1st floor hallway for access)
• Friday, June 25:  San Francisco Veteran’s Administration Hospital, Building 7, room 112, noon.

Read more

Earthquakes, fires, floods, pandemics. The public relies on health professionals, emergency responders and trained volunteers to react appropriately to a range of disasters, big or small. But does everyone understand the systems that are in place to respond to these dreaded events? University of California Television (UCTV) and the California Preparedness Education Network present “Disaster Preparedness for Health Professionals,” a free, four-part video series that highlights best practices for preparedness as determined by disaster response experts from throughout California.

View videos