An ad hoc committee will organize a 1.5-day public workshop to advance medical and public health research conducted during large-scale emergencies and disasters (“disaster science”) to benefit the health of communities, emergency operations, recovery, and science. The workshop will convene disaster science researchers; experts from relevant fields that can inform health and public health efforts, such as environmental health, social sciences, and engineering; community representatives; policy makers; and public health preparedness and response practitioners.

Workshop presentations and discussions will focus on community public health and:

• Discuss examples of recent disaster science projects that have informed the operational response during the disaster itself, will be informative in preparing for and responding to future disasters, and/or have demonstrated health or economic benefits;
• Examine systems-level barriers encountered during these projects, and discuss what would have enabled the research projects to have be even more useful;
• Explore innovative models and infrastructure that could address these barriers and improve capabilities, integration, and coordination within the disaster science community; and
• Consider potential principles and components that could be included in the foundations of a national disaster research framework.

This workshop builds off, and incorporates progress since, a 2014 workshop titled “Enabling Rapid and Sustainable Public Health Research During Disasters”, which was jointly convened by the Institute of Medicine and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The ad hoc committee will develop the agenda, select and invite speakers and discussants, and moderate the discussion. A proceedings of the presentations and discussions at the workshop will be prepared by a designated rapporteur in accordance with institutional guidelines.