The Philadelphia Department of Public Health works to keep Philadelphia healthy, serving the 1.58 million residents of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The sixth largest city in the nation, Philadelphia is racially and ethnically diverse: 41% non-Hispanic black, 35% non-Hispanic white, 15% Hispanic, and 8 percent Asian. Health disparities exist particularly for racial/ethnic minorities and those experiencing poverty. A 2018 hazard vulnerability assessment completed by Drexel University defined the following hazards as the top five public health planning priorities for Philadelphia: pandemic, coastal storm, flood, utility interruption, and localized infectious disease outbreak. These hazards would require strong emergency operations coordination and a trained, capable workforce to respond while still continuing PDPH's essential functions to ensure the health of the city.
The Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness Program, within the Division of Disease Control at the Philadelphia Department of Public Health, is charged with planning for and responding to public health emergencies in the City of Philadelphia. This includes establishing public health priorities, developing and testing response plans, training staff and volunteers to their emergency response roles, and collaborating with partners. Our Program's website is https://www.phila.gov/departments/department-of-public-health/disease-prevention/preparedness/. The Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness Team is comprised of 12 public health professionals working on all facets of preparedness and response; we know, however, that any public health emergency would require workforce needs well beyond our Program's capacity.
Following the real events of the 2015 Papal Visit and the 2016 Democratic National Convention, as well as weather events like Hurricanes Irene and Sandy, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health identified the need for surge capacity in communications, staffing, and volunteer management. PDPH uses a Public Health Emergency Coordination Center (PHECC) to act as the Health Department's Emergency Operations Center. This model includes a communications branch to manage all tactical communications, including activation, notification, and calldowns of response partners, a staffing branch to assign staff and volunteers to roles and response sites, and a medical field operations branch to manage deployed volunteers on-site at medical field sites, like first aid tents. The staffing model for the PHECC ranges from 19-27 staff for one 12-hour shift.
During a large-scale response, even a robust public health preparedness team will be spread thin. With response activities running 24 hours a day and many or all functions activated to bolster a successful response, the public health workforce will need to surge to manage the leadership and execution of all tasks. The PDPH Response Team was developed in 2016 to help address gaps in staffing at the response leadership level. It draws public health professionals from other programs at the Health Department to make up a skilled supplemental workforce to continue emergency operations coordination functions throughout a response.
When the Response Team was established, and as it continues, the goals are:
- Train non-preparedness staff to fill leadership and staff roles within the PHECC, and
- Familiarize staff with the Incident Command Structure (ICS) that calls for the swift assembly of staff to perform key emergency response and administrative tasks associated with a large-scale event.
PDPH has established a cadre of 40 staff who can fill leadership and staff roles within the PHECC. These staff are trained on emergency response functions and ICS. Trainings are repeated regularly, and the introductory training will debut as a webinar in 2020.
Training non-preparedness staff to fill preparedness roles greatly expands the emergency workforce, which enhances the safety and health of the public. Support from other program managers and health department leadership, and willingness to support preparedness on behalf of staff, were essential factors to expand critical surge capacity to ensure continuity of emergency operations during an activation.
The Response Team vastly expands upon the Bioterrorism and Public Health Preparedness Program's ability to serve the public of Philadelphia during an emergency by providing a trained surge workforce to manage all facets of a response. Should an emergency or incident occur, seamless coordination is critical in ensuring the health and safety of Philadelphia residents.