An ad hoc committee will organize a 1.5-day public workshop in Washington, D.C. Through this workshop, the committee will convene individuals with expertise in medical and public health preparedness, response, and recovery research, public policy, and practice to: 1) examine related medical and public health preparedness, response, and recovery challenges, 2) explore new and innovative approaches and opportunities for resolving these challenges, and 3) discuss the direction of possible future policy actions.
Specific topics that may be explored in this workshop include:
• Global Health Security (e.g., opportunities for strengthening the U.S. health care and public health systems capacity to detect, prevent, plan for, respond to, and recover from naturally occurring outbreaks and intentional or accidental releases of dangerous pathogens and agents)
• Communication and Coordination (e.g., opportunities for improving situational awareness, public/private information sharing, threat intelligence sharing, risk communication, and collaboration among multi-sector disaster response and medical and public health networks).
• Individual and Community Health Resilience (e.g., opportunities for enhancing and ensuring the resilience of individuals and communities through disaster risk reduction, sustainable financing, the inclusion of health in post-disaster recovery planning efforts, work with non-traditional sectors, and exploring special considerations needed to strengthen a community after a mass casualty incident).
• Critical Infrastructure Protection (e.g., opportunities for improving health care and public health sector and interdependent sector vulnerabilities, recognition of consequences of cascading and prolonged failures of infrastructure, threats from chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and high yield explosives, and the increasing threat and consequences of cyber-attack)
The committee will develop the agenda for the workshop session, select and invite speakers and discussants, and moderate the discussions. Workshop proceedings will be prepared by a designated rapporteur in accordance with institutional guidelines, based on the presentations and discussions held during the workshop. The proceedings will be subject to appropriate review procedures before release.