SPH establish emergency preparedness research center

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention award $8.2 million to fund endeavor

(Oct. 8, 2008) — The University of Minnesota School of Public Health was awarded more than $1.5 million by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to establish a Preparedness and Emergency Response Research Center. The University of Minnesota was one of seven schools nationwide to be awarded a grant, which will allocate $8.2 million to the School of Public Health over five years.

“It’s a privilege to be among the first academic institutions selected for this program,” said Debra Olson (pictured), D.N.P, M.P.H., R.N., associate dean for public health practice education and principal investigator of the project. “The University of Minnesota has always been recognized for its technology-enhanced simulation. This is an opportunity to bring these resources and the expertise of our public health preparedness systems, educational effectiveness, and exercises in simulation to a national level.”

The University of Minnesota project will focus its research on how to enhance the usefulness and facilitation of emergency response training. The project, “University of Minnesota: Simulations and Exercises for Educational Effectiveness” (U-SEEE), will identify best practices for the design and delivery of preparedness training and facilitate the translation of research results into improvements in public health preparedness systems.

“This is yet another way to expand the efforts by our nation’s schools of public health to enhance state and local emergency preparedness efforts,” said Richard E. Besser, M.D., director of CDC’s Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response. “These research centers will connect public health with scientists involved in business, engineering, legal, and social sciences to incorporate multiple perspectives into preparedness and response research which can be used to strengthen our nation’s response capability.”

U-SEEE includes four inter-professional, interdependent and inter-related research projects, as well as opportunities for the development of new research initiatives. Three of the four projects are within the University of Minnesota Academic Health Center and School of Public Health; the fourth is a partnership with the University of Illinois’s School of Public Health's Center for the Advancement of Distance Education (CADE). The projects include:

• “Retrospective Cohort Study of Responders Training and System Performance”
• “Effectiveness of Simulated Disaster Response Scenarios”
• “Creating High Reliability Teams for Public Health Preparedness”
• “Preparedness and Emergency Response Using Simulated Environments (PERUSE)”

The hope is that U-SEEE research projects will better prepare the public health system in the event of a disaster, specifically addressing the CDC’s priority of developing ways to ensure the timely and continual updating of the standards and competencies necessary for an effective, efficient workforce. Together, the seven schools will conduct research that will evaluate the structure, capabilities, and performance of public health systems for preparedness and emergency response activities.

The establishment of the new research centers is mandated by the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act of 2006, which calls for research to improve federal, state, local, and tribal public health preparedness and response systems.

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Contact

Laura Stroup, Academic Health Center, 612-624-5680 or stro0481@umn.edu
Jenna Langer, Academic Health Center, 612-626-4784 or lang0712@umn.edu