Public health emergencies such as infectious disease, bioterrorism, or natural disasters require a coordinated response at the local, national, and international levels. RAND research improves the capability of public health systems to anticipate and prepare for such emergencies, by providing a robust set of standardized response measures, tabletop exercises, and toolkits; using GIS technology for planning; and identifying best practices and lessons learned from multiagency exercises.
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.
Commentary
President Obama's nominee to lead the TSA said he would like U.S. airport screening to more closely resemble Israel's. Perhaps attention is turning to what really matters about the attempted Northwest bombing: what it can teach us about aviation security, write Brian Michael Jenkins, Bruce Butterworth and Cathal Flynn.
Commentary
The revelation of the arrest in October of Colleen Renee LaRose, who had adopted the pathetically predictable nom de guerre Jihad Jane, once again focuses national attention on homegrown terrorism. But while worrisome, this threat needs to be kept in perspective, writes Brian Michael Jenkins.
Commentary
High-ranking officials in Washington tell Americans that the threat from terrorists—principally self-radicalized homegrown terrorists—is high. Do terrorists pose a threat to Los Angeles, and if so, what should ordinary citizens do? asks Brian Michael Jenkins.
Report
In testimony presented before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, James Dobbins discusses the current international disaster relief operation in Haiti and how it is affected by a preexisting post-conflict reconstruction mission, which he considers ultimately more important.
Commentary
America's tolerance for terrorism cannot be zero. Although we obviously aim to do as much as possible, preventing every attack is an unattainable goal. The country needs to steel itself for the near-certainty that there will at some point be another major strike on U.S. territory, writes Gregory F. Treverton.
Commentary
The latest disaster to befall Haiti creates the opportunity to combine bipartisan accord on Haiti in Washington with keen and perhaps sustained American public interest, writes James Dobbins.
Journal Article
Successful disaster recovery efforts in other countries emphasized local empowerment, organization and leadership, and planning for sustainability-providig potential lessons for US disaster management.
Journal Article
Information campaigns made more adults concerned about a pandemic, but didn't reassure them sufficiently about H1N1 vaccine safety and effectiveness that they got the vaccine.
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.
Journal Article
This paper describes an expert panel process that identified a set of fundable and practically feasible research priorities in the field of syndromic surveillance.
Journal Article
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.
Report
This overview of the results of a survey of adults age 18 and over of seasonal influenza vaccine uptake will inform public health officials and other stakeholders on progress toward vaccinating adults prior to the end of the vaccination season.
Journal Article
If fined tuned algorithms are used, emergency room-based syndromic surveillance focusing on unspecified infection cases in children is an effective way to determine the beginning of the influenza outbreak.
Commentary
Four years after Hurricane Katrina, many people in the Gulf Coast region are still "just surviving," struggling with the economic devastation and the physical and psychological toll of these kinds of disasters, write Anita Chandra and Joie Acosta.
Commentary
The federal government has spent about $140 billion responding to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the Gulf Coast now needs more money for hurricane and flood protection and for coastal restoration. But we still haven't properly evaluated whether our money was spent wisely, writes Melissa Flournoy.
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.
Past Event
Senior political scientist Christopher Nelson and operations researcher Edward Chan will discuss RAND's evaluation of federal efforts to improve public health preparedness in the nation's largest metropolitan areas in The H1N1 Pandemic: Lessons Learned from the Cities Readiness Initiative on September 14, 2009.
Multimedia
In this Congressional Briefing held on September 14, 2009, researchers Christopher Nelson and Edward Chan discuss RAND's recently published evaluation of the Cities Readiness Initiative, which helps the nation's largest metropolitan areas develop the ability to rapidly deliver life-saving medications and other medical supplies to their populations. The study has implications for pandemic influenza and other federal public health preparedness programs.
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