On January 29, 108 policy makers from emergency management, public health, education, transportation and state services gathered to discuss these and other issues in a pandemic influenza tabletop exercise, "K-12 School Closure as a Disease Containment Measure." Officials discussed their options - all under the watchful eyes of observers who recorded their deliberations. The participants included a Cities Readiness Initiative jurisdiction, Dakota County; urban area, Rochester; rural area, Carlton and Douglas Counties; and suburban area, Carver County. The MDH is developing CD-ROMs of the exercise and materials for use by regional and local partners, which should be available in early March. For more information about the exercise or CD-ROMs, contact {name of person removed but available in source doc - ITW}, pandemic flu planning coordinator, at {See source on MN State web site provided above for contact information - I don't feel comfortable putting the email addresses on the web. ITW)
The Minnesota Department of Health led a tabletop exercise on January 29, 2007 to discuss the possible role of school closure in disease containment during an influenza pandemic. With these materials, you can recreate your own tabletop exercise to continue discussions with local government and schools.
Note: the original training included a realistic video clip for each scenario. Copies of the videos are available at each County/City Health Department or from {See source for contact information - I don't feel comfortable putting email addresses on the web. ITW)
The following are available for download at the MDH site:
Pandemic Influenza Tabletop Exercise Overview (PowerPoint: 1.8MB/22 slides) (PDF: 927KB/22 pages)
Presentation giving an overview of the tabletop exercise.
Planning the Exercise
Before the tabletop exercise, you'll need to invite participants, train your facilitators, and prepare materials. These materials will help you structure your pre-meeting activities and trainings.
Player Handbook
Materials to help you construct a handbook for each participant, including the videos you'll show and the evaluation forms.
Facilitator Handbook
The facilitator materials include everything the players get, plus additional guidance to help in the facilitation role.
Resources
Plans, legal statutes, and faq documents that give participants the relevant background information.
CDC has also produced a new tool for estimating days lost from work that might be caused by a pandemic. I missed it if we already discussed it here. I wonder whether they used the 1968 severity proportions like they did in FluSurge model. For anyone wishing to plan for a worst case scenerio, the rate of serious illness, hospitalizations etc were seriously underestimated in that model as a result. Hope they did not carry that weakness forward into this model. It is discussed in the MN PanFlu Newsletter.
Pandemic Influenza Get Informed?Be Prepared MDH Pandemic Influenza Newsletter February, 2007
If you are a software fan, CDC has a new tool for you. FluWorkLoss is planning software that estimates the potential number of days lost from work due to an influenza pandemic. Check it out at http://www.cdc.gov/f....
I have not had time to review either of these, so my comment will have to come later. Looking forward to board comments on both. |
