Because natural and manmade disasters can occur at any time, individuals, communities, and governments must be prepared. RAND has developed guidelines for individual preparedness in response to terrorist attacks; evaluated, modeled, and enhanced preparedness policy options for government officials at all levels; and recommended actions that communities should take to prepare for bioterrorist attacks, pandemic flu outbreaks, and other large-scale emergencies.
Report
Law enforcement agencies in areas where terrorist threats are considered to be high have expanded their focus beyond traditional crime prevention and investigation to include counterterrorism and homeland security operations.
News Release
Law enforcement agencies in areas where terrorist threats are considered to be high have expanded their focus beyond traditional crime prevention and investigation to include counterterrorism and homeland security operations.
Research Brief
Less than half of acute care visits in the United States involve a patient's personal physician. Emergency physicians, who comprise only 4 percent of doctors, handle 28 percent of all acute care encounters and nearly all after-hours and weekend care.
Journal Article
The report of the
Journal Article
Analysts seeking to examine patterns of emergency department care must choose among the available datasets, bearing in mind the strengths and weaknesses of each source when conclusions based on the estimates it yields.
Journal Article
This paper presents research recommendations from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Working Group on emergency department management of acute heart failure.
Report
This report describes a method for modeling an emergency response system; identifying how individual parts of the system might fail; and assessing the likelihood of each failure and the severity of its effects on the overall response effort.
Journal Article
Expert panel discussion of the emergency response in Haiti concluded that rigorous, objective after-action reports are needed both to improve ongoing operations in Haiti and to enhance future responses to large-scale population emergencies.
Report
This report describes the current policy context for domestic all-hazards risk-informed capabilities-based planning by local military and civilian authorities and provides a framework for a local planning support tool for their use.
Project
The Homeland Security and Defense Center conducts analysis to prepare and protect communities and critical infrastructure from natural disasters and terrorism and is a joint effort of the RAND National Security Research Division and RAND Justice, Infrastructure, and Environment.
Media Advisory
RAND experts are available to discuss a variety of policy topics President Obama is expected to discuss during Wednesday's State of the Union Address.
Journal Article
Annual rates of employee turnover and costs associated with turnover vary widely across types of emergency medical services (EMS) agencies.
Journal Article
The authors introduce the LR-MEXCLP, a hybrid model combining the local vehicle busyness estimates of MALP (Maximum Availability Location Problem) with the maximum coverage objective of the MEXCLP (Maximum Expected Covering Location Problem) model.
Journal Article
Compared with detection based on the presenting patient's chief complaint, data from an emergency room diagnosis can provide valuable information about influenza-like illness despite a potential delay in detection.
Journal Article
A novel and practical quality improvement tool can help hospitals and clinics plan for and respond to the psychological consequences of catastrophic events that create a surge of psychological casualties presenting for health care.
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This commentary argues that unless the U.S. examines and plans for the psychological consequences of disasters such as Katrina and the recent oil spill, communities will be struggling to address acute and chronic health issues while trying to rebuild.
Journal Article
This article describes an evaluation of the Cities Readiness Initiative, a federal program to improve communities' ability to dispense medications rapidly during emergencies.
Journal Article
Paramedics need to "unlearn" traditional resuscitation methods and implement a "bundle" of proven and highly promising interventions, all delivered within a short time frame.
Journal Article
This summary of a presentation delivered at a National Institutes of Health conference outlines specific areas for enhancing research on emergency medicine.
Report
Changing emergency planning rules to make nongovernmental organizations a key component of recovery efforts could get them involved earlier and speed the full recovery of communities after disaster strikes.
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