ASPR: Technical Assistance for State Health Departments on Health Care Preparedness

Objective 2: Engage state health departments and officials in a dialogue around health care system and hospital preparedness
SHDs and health officials are intimately familiar with the communities and populations that they serve and are an essential partner in carrying out the mission of ASPR. ASPR seeks to engage SHDs and health officials as well as other appropriate stakeholders in bi-directional communications to evaluate the effectiveness of, and ensure that, ASPR’s strategies, policies, and programmatic activities are informed by and support the needs of states, territories, and local communities. The project will foster collaboration with state health officials to achieve, for example, strengthen emergency preparedness, response, and recovery systems and capabilities, and build well-functioning healthcare coalitions, among other activities.
Some activities that support this objective may include:
• Identify and assist in developing content and utilizing opportunities to exchange information with ASTHO members, publish, or share information verbally with SHDs and health officials. This activity may also include ASPR participation in ASTHO-sponsored webinars.
• Have information published for constituents through ASTHO newsletters and websites.
• Create opportunities for ASTHO members and other health officials and relevant other disciplines, as necessary, to inform federal documents and activities such as suggesting and designing implementation models for the NHSS that integrate the needs of SHDs and tribal and territorial health officials.

Objective 3: Learn from SHDs and share promising practices

ASPR seeks to partner with SHDs and territorial health officials and local communities which frequently prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergency incidents and to identify valuable lessons and promising practices to collect and share these practices with other SHDs and communities. This project will capture lessons learned and promising practices and share them more widely.
Some activities that support this objective may include:
• Develop and conduct surveys of ASTHO members and other SHDs as well as territorial health officials, local health officials, healthcare coalitions, and other stakeholders on priority national health security topics including fostering development of healthcare coalitions, building community health resilience, recovery planning, strengthening health and emergency systems, behavioral health services, among other potential topics. Work collaboratively with ASPR to determine the topics and develop the survey objectives and main study questions.
• Advertise, manage the logistics of hosting, and assist ASPR in planning webinars to be made available to ASTHO Members and others as deemed necessary. Planning for the webinars would commence immediately following award and topics such as those noted above and others will be determined in conjunction with the Project Officer.

Objective 4: Provide technical assistance to SHDs and communities
The federal government has a lot of expertise and experience to bring to bear as well and SHDs and territorial communities can benefit from federal resources, tools, and expertise that ASPR and other federal agencies can provide. This project will identify areas in which SHDs and territorial communities can benefit from federal technical assistance and find mechanisms to provide technical assistance.
Some activities that support this objective may include:
• Facilitating health departments’ abilities to work with their respective health care systems so that the health care systems might prepare for public health emergencies; enhance system planning; enhance local, state-level, and regional response; and integrate with emergency management and public health through building and sustaining coalitions.