Arizona
December 2015

Children have special needs that must be incorporated into emergency preparedness and response efforts and in order to adequately protect them, the health care community requires opportunities to learn new information, collaborate, and share best practices to ensure children are appropriately cared for during emergency events.

The Arizona Pediatric Disaster Coalition, a health care coalition (HCC) supported through the Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP), recognized the pressing need to prioritize pediatric patients and involve the education system in preparedness efforts. In December 2015, a joint exercise, funded in part through the Arizona Department of Health Services HPP cooperative agreement, evaluated how schools and hospitals interact in the wake of an emergency. The outcomes of the exercise played a direct role in improving relationships between hospitals and schools and helped to streamline emergency response care for the most vulnerable population. The exercise took a medical surge exercise model and creatively tailored the design to include schools and unaccompanied and injured minors. Health care workers, school administrators, and teachers participated along with law enforcement, emergency medical services, and other emergency response personnel to comprehensively test a response centered on the needs of society’s most vulnerable members. Within this revised model, health care and education partners ran through a myriad of difficult scenarios, including how best to handle multiple minors separated from guardians. They also tackled thorny issues, such as obtaining consent to care for minors and family reunification.

During each scenario, the team evaluated gaps to identify areas for improvement. The exercise highlighted the fact that many hospitals and schools do not have a clear understanding of what activities they should be performing during an emergency and who should lead these activities. Even basic terminology used across disciplines posed challenges in getting the differing groups to rapidly and effectively communicate. In addition, the exercise highlighted the clear need for HCCs and their members to have family reunification standard operating procedures to ensure that families are swiftly and correctly reunited in the wake of an emergency and prompted discussions regarding community behavioral health needs and the special support that families, hospital personnel and children need after a traumatic event.

ASPR HPP’s funding and resources were pivotal to the informative Arizona Departments of Health Services and Education joint exercise. Teresa Ehnert, the Arizona Bureau Chief for Public Health Emergency Preparedness stated that “HPP enabled the innovative thinking and planning the pediatric medical exercise provided. Unprecedented in the field, we were able to start a dialogue concerning the gaps in our current disaster preparedness, response, and recovery model, particularly as it relates to pediatric populations. HPP contributed to not only rallying the correct health care professionals together, it enabled us to employ a creative lens in addressing a pressing community need.”

Arizona
Spring 2022

The Arizona Coalition for Healthcare Emergency Response (AzCHER) used Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP) cooperative agreement funding to develop a multipurpose emergency response app that functions as an emergency response notification system. The AzCHER mobile app houses virtual training manuals, resource guides, incident command forms, and federal emergency response resources.

As an emergency response notification system, the app significantly bolsters communication and situational awareness for the over 900 users working in hospitals, long-term care facilities, and emergency medical services across Arizona, many of whom are members of Arizona's health care coalitions (HCCs).

The first of its kind, AzCHER's app centralizes many emergency response resources such as Hospital Evacuation Decision, Incident Command System and Mass Casualty Guides, psychological first aid trainings, and more. This makes the app a convenient resource for response teams to reference and use at any time or place on their phone or tablet, which is crucial to a rapid response.

HCCs in Connecticut, Colorado, Hawaii, and Vermont are working with AzCHER to develop similar apps, which will enable other HCCs to equip their communities with new technology and resources to save lives during an incident or disaster.
  

“Our purpose is to build resilience in Arizona’s health care delivery system so that it is prepared to  respond to and recover from a large-scale emergency or disaster. The AzCHER mobile app supports  this purpose by enabling collaborating during day-to-day operations as well as through large scale emergencies or disasters” - Jamie Beauvais, Central Region Manager and            Statewide Training and Exercise Manager at AzCHER

Background

Prior to the development of the app, AzCHER purchased and distributed training and educational materials, such as psychological first aid books, for their coalition members across the state using funding from HPP. With these books and other training resource guides in high demand, AzCHER began exploring options to increase accessibility and overall information sharing with their members and partners. Ultimately, AzCHER decided to use HPP cooperative agreement funding to develop and launch an app that served as a multiservice emergency response resource, housing everything from virtual copies of training manuals to links to ASPR resources, while simultaneously serving as an emergency response notification system.

Response:

The AzCHER mobile app enables responders, including HCCs, emergency medical services, hospitals, and long-term care facilities to collaborate during both day-to-day operations, as well as during emergencies or disasters. Users can easily download digital materials including incident command system forms or digital training guides, making key response resources more convenient and accessible. In addition to housing multiple resources, the app can send out a mass notification, in the event of an emergency, by using geographic information system mapping. This feature allows AzCHER to increase its emergency communication and coordination when planning for and responding to a disaster. As of April 2023, the AzCHER app had more than 900 subscribers among HCC members such as hospitals, long-term care facilities, and emergency responders.

When Arizona hosted the 2023 Super Bowl, AzCHER worked with the National Football League's Super Bowl planning team and a nearby Level I trauma center to conduct an emergency communications exercise using the app's built-in emergency notification feature. The exercise simulated an emergency response to a mass casualty incident. During the exercise, the app notified the emergency management team and the hospital emergency response team in the area of the trauma center. This successful exercise emphasized the value of the app and its ability to provide near instant communications during an emergency.