Recent research reveals that willingness to respond to public health emergencies is very different from ability to respond. The research shows that response willingness barriers may significantly diminish the public health infrastructure’s capacity to manage a public health emergency, such as pandemic influenza. To date, preparedness training efforts across the country have focused on imparting knowledge to enhance public health workers’ ability to respond, but have not addressed the vital willingness dimension. To help address this gap, the Johns Hopkins Center for Public Health Preparedness has created the Johns Hopkins ~ Public Health Infrastructure Response Survey ToolTM (JH~PHIRST) an innovative online assessment to help health departments identify barriers and build solutions to address this critical “willingness” variable in response. This program has five components, including: - Surveying workers’ within participating health departments, using the online survey instrument.
- Analyzing data from the JH~PHIRST surveys.
- Reporting survey results to participating health departments.
- Curriculum development consultation in collaboration with participating health departments to identify interventions to improve willingness-to-respond.
- Evaluating impact of willingness-to-respond curricular interventions, through post-intervention assessment.
For more information on JH~PHIRST or to schedule this program for your health department, please contact our Center at cphp@jhsph.edu. |
