Jeffrey Schlegelmilch

Schools and Terrorism: Global Trends, Impacts, and Lessons for Resilience

ABSTRACT This study characterizes trends in the frequency and characteristics of terrorist attacks in child-serving educational institutions around the world, examining the specific vulnerabilies of children and schools with regard to terrorist violence, as well as the various impacts that violence has on children, communities, and societies. Following the analysis of available data on terrorist attacks against educational institutions, vulnerabilities, and impacts, the study concludes with a discussion of what still needs to be understood in the intersection of child vulnerability and terrorism, and provides recommendations for improving resilience to terrorist attacks against child-serving educational institutions.

The Biosurveillance Analytics Resource Directory (BARD): Facilitating the Use of Epidemiological Models for Infectious Disease Surveillance

Epidemiological modeling for infectious disease is important for disease management and its routine implementation needs to be facilitated through better description of models in an operational context. A standardized model characterization process that allows selection or making manual comparisons of available models and their results is currently lacking. A key need is a universal framework to facilitate model description and understanding of its features. Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) has developed a comprehensive framework that can be used to characterize an infectious disease model in an operational context. The framework was developed through a consensus among a panel of subject matter experts. In this paper, we describe the framework, its application to model characterization, and the development of the Biosurveillance Analytics Resource Directory (BARD; http://brd.bsvgateway.org/brd/), to facilitate the rapid selection of operational models for specific infectious/communicable diseases. We offer this framework and associated database to stakeholders of the infectious disease modeling field as a tool for standardizing model description and facilitating the use of epidemiological models.

Disaster prepared: How federal funding in the USA supports health system and public health readiness.

Federal funding for health and medical preparedness in the USA has created an important foundation for preparing the health and medical systems to respond to a wide range of hazards. A declining trend in funding for these preparedness activities threatens to undo the progress that has been made over the last decade and reduce the state of readiness to respond to the health and medical impacts of disasters.

Emergency Preparedness Training for Hospital Nursing Staff, New York City, 2012-2016

PURPOSE Many nurses are trained inadequately in emergency preparedness (EP), preventing them from effectively executing response roles during disasters, such as chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRNE) events. Nurses also indicate lacking confidence in their abilities to perform EP activities. The purpose of this article is to describe the phased development of, and delivery strategies for, a CBRNE curriculum to enhance EP among nursing professionals. The New York City (NYC) Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) and the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia Universitys Earth Institute led the initiative. METHODS Curriculum development included four phases. In Phases I and II, nursing staff at 20 participating NYC hospitals conducted 7,177 surveys and participated in 20 focus groups to identify training gaps in EP. In Phase III, investigators developed and later refined the CBRNE curriculum based on gaps identified. In Phase IV, 22 nurse educators (representing 7 of the original 20 participating hospitals) completed train-the-trainer sessions. Of these nurse educators, three were evaluated on their ability to train other nurses using the curriculum, which investigators finalized. FINDINGS The CBRNE curriculum included six modules, a just-in-time training, and an online annual refresher course that addressed EP gaps identified in surveys and focus groups. Among the 11 nurses who were trained by three nurse educators during a pilot training, participant knowledge of CBRNE events and response roles increased from an average of 54% (range 45%-75%) on the pre-test to 89% (range 80%-90%) on the posttest. CONCLUSIONS By participating in nursing CBRNE training, nurses increased their knowledge of and preparedness to respond to disasters. The train-the-trainer curriculum is easily adaptable to meet the needs of other healthcare settings. CLINICAL RELEVANCE The CBRNE curriculum can be used to train nurses to better prepare for and more effectively respond to disasters.

Acts of terrorism and mass violence targeting schools : Analysis and implications for preparedness in the USA

To enhance the preparedness of US schools to acts of terrorism and mass violence, the landscape of threats against schools must first be understood. This includes exploring the global trends of acts of terrorism against schools, as well as looking specifically at the history of terrorism and acts of mass violence against schools domestically. This paper conducts a review of two databases in order to look at the trends in acts of terrorism and mass violence carried out against schools, and provides recommendations for domestic school preparedness based on this information.

Superstorm Sandy: Lessons for Optimizing Limited Training Resources for Local Impact.

Professional training development, whether for a classroom, work environment, or other setting, typically follows a validated instructional design model that includes an assessment of learner needs before the development of a training. This foundational principle is integrated into federal guidance documents for emergency preparedness training. That said, local preparedness resources are sometimes in misalignment with this principle. Funding tends to favor nationally defined priorities as a proxy for the assessment of local needs. For example, the guidance for the 2015 Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) and Hospital Preparedness Program (HPP) funding application requires “justification” that “all training is purposefully designed to close operational gaps and sustain jurisdictionally required preparedness competencies.” Beyond such vague references, there are no robust training needs assessment requirements. Additionally, many of the recommended and freely available preparedness trainings for public health personnel are not specific to public health and are instead based on a nationallevel view of preparedness needs that may not fully accommodate local requirements. During the response to Superstorm Sandy, local public health departments had to carry out disaster response tasks based in part on federally funded trainings developed over years of investment in public health preparedness. To understand this further, we analyzed field data collected as part of a research study on the public health system response to Superstorm Sandy, based on key informant interviews and focus group discussions with lower New York State county health officials and first responders.