PREPAREDNESS AND EMERGENCY RESPONSE RESEARCH CENTERS: A PUBLIC HEALTH SYSTEMS APP

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The overall goal of this proposed Preparedness and Emergency Response Research Center is to establish a collaborative research effort within the UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters (CPHD) which will facilitate the conduct of translational public health systems research to strengthen and improve the ability of federal, state, and local public health agencies to prepare for, respond to, and recover from natural and human-induced (including terrorism) disasters. The Center for Public Health and Disasters will achieve this goal by concentrating the research focus on Priority Theme Number 3: Create and Maintain Sustainable Preparedness and Response Systems. The five independent research projects proposed in this program project application will achieve these specific aims through an integrated strategy to explore the inter-organizational cooperation that is necessary to create and sustain a public health system that is resilient to disasters. The five projects are: 1. Improving Collaboration between the School System and Public Health to Enhance Preparedness; 2. Building Effective Public Health Partnerships with Community-Based and Faith-Based Organizations for Disaster Readiness; 3. Developing an Integrated Data Management and Surveillance System to Identify Response Triggers; 4. Improving Emergency Preparedness for Vulnerable Populations through GIS; 5. Community Based Participatory Research to Develop Environmental Health Emergency Resilience. With these five subprojects and the proposed pilot projects, this research program project looks at the many aspects of the public health system. Two of the projects are conducting a coordinated survey of a national sample of health departments to explore how governmental public health agencies collaborate with schools, community-based organizations and faith-based organizations. The other three projects further these relationships to explore the use of specific tools that take into consideration these relationships. Hazardous events create a unique set of circumstances that simultaneously increase the need for public health and disrupt the ability of the public health system to respond to the health needs of the public. In order for public health systems to function in the chaotic and surge environment of a disaster, the very systems and the organizations which make up those systems must themselves be resilient to disasters. In this light, the research agenda of the UCLA Center for Public Health and Disasters aims to improve the resilience of the public health system.