Emergency Planning for Public Health

Health equity simply means everyone has an equal shot at living their best possible life. Health equity identifies barriers to achieving optimum health and works to eliminate them so that all people have access to the same foundational services, levels of care, and basic social determinants of health. Often, health equity is best addressed through policy that ensures that health equity is being considered when decision-makers are voting on issues that may have an impact on population health.

A Health In All Policies (HIAP) approach is how Optima EP addresses health equity with the organizations it serves, ensuring that health equity will be embedded throughout all layers of your agency. Contact us to learn more about the training and policy support we offer.

Optima EP staff have directly led public health agencies through both accreditation and re-accreditation, and have mentored nine other public health agencies to achieve their accreditation goals as well. Let us conduct a gap assessment and provide recommendations, tools, and resources, coupled with one-to-one technical support to get your agency to meet or exceed PHAB guidelines.

Living and working through a global pandemic has taken a toll on our personal and professional lives. As we move toward recovery, it is vital to name, acknowledge, and integrate some of the challenges and struggles we've all faced. This 90-minute session will explore concepts such as traumatic and cumulative stress reactions, personal and collective grief, honoring loss, and celebrating individual and team resilience to answer the question, "Now what?". We will include some tools and resources to help you and your team strategically and confidently thrive post-pandemic.

Facilitated Peer Discussion:

Come to share your thoughts and reflections on your COVID story in a safe environment with your peers through a facilitated discussion with a focus on questions such as: 

• What role(s) did you have during the COVID response?
• What were some of the hardest or most challenging moments during the past two years?
• Where are you feeling "stuck"?
• What did you learn about yourself or your team during the response?

Explore strategies for recovery and building resilience such as transitioning, reframing, and managing expectations. (60-90-minute session)

When an emergency happens, people in the community want to help. This training will provide participants with a complete and practical plan on how to register, assign, and manage spontaneous volunteers for response and recovery activities. This training is intended for Medical Reserve Corps volunteers, public health emergency preparedness planners, and any other interested individuals. 

Throughout the spectrum of what is known as healthcare, the myriad of agencies that provide services or care to the public is immense. Each agency, in order to be as successful as possible, needs to be able to articulate its mission, services, care, education, and guidance to the clients they serve in a way that is clearly received, understood, and can be properly acted upon. This is especially difficult in healthcare with the technical medical jargon that is often used.

Health Literacy is a standardized, evidence-based practice that strives to simplify how healthcare speaks to its clients and ensures understanding, thus leading to better patient outcomes. Optima EP provides a variety of ways to embed health literacy into your practices and programs.

When major incidents or disasters happen, loved ones can get separated from each other. Unfortunately, when fatalities occur, positive identifications need to be made so that families can be notified and reunited with their loved ones to start the process of honoring, healing, and recovery.

Family assistance and reunification centers follow a standardized process under the National Incident Management System (NIMS) to ensure that this process runs smoothly and efficiently, minimizes error, and provides optimum liability protection under local, regional, state, and federal emergency declarations. Optima EP provides didactic training as well as exercises to ensure your agency or jurisdiction understands the functions of this important emergency response resource.

The top businesses begin planning for succession well before a notice of retirement or letter of resignation is on their doorstep. Your staff are your most valuable asset, and not capturing the institutional knowledge of key staff who leave your agency can cost your business thousands in re-training, orientation, and lowered productivity. Let our team assist with developing a simple succession plan with tools that actually work!

Is your agency founded on a core of ethics? How do you know? In alignment with health equity, do you follow a process for making decisions that are ethics-based? How do you handle complaints from your customers? Are they reviewed in a standardized way through an ethics lens? Let our team assist you in developing an ethics plan that will complement your health equity plan, ensuring your agency is built on a foundation of ethical practices and principles.

Most people are now familiar with the term mass clinic or Point of Dispensing (POD). Public Health, and the healthcare system in general, have utilized this concept to administer high volumes of vaccines to people throughout the pandemic. Our team can assist you with POD planning, including site assessment, floor plan layout, security plan, and throughput estimates. Let us help you customize a solid plan for your community.

If a disaster emergency shelter is opened, pre-incident planning and response coordination is essential to safely care for all community residents including those with access and functional needs. Our training encourages your staff or volunteers to consider shelter operations from a different point of view. 

If your agency or organization is struggling to find the time or resources to develop, write, or revise your Emergency Operations Plans, we are here to assist! We will meet with you to provide a localized plan that works!