The role of the Bureau’s Public Health Preparedness and Response (PHPR) section coordinates the planning, organizing, training, equipping, exercising, evaluating, and taking corrective action to respond to recover from natural, biological, or chemical disasters. The section works to build a more organized approach and strengthen Emergency Support Function 8 (ESF8) and Public Health and Medical Services.
For more detailed information on PHPR duties, activities, projects, and more, please refer to the sections below:
- The Public Health Emergency Preparedness Program (PHEP)
- The Healthcare Preparedness Program (HPP)
The PHEP program encourages state, tribal, and local public health officials to work collaboratively with dozens of stakeholders (e.g., emergency management, EMS agencies, fire departments, healthcare systems, hospitals, law enforcement, long-term care facilities, public health, skilled nursing facilities, and volunteer agencies). They develop emergency response plans and build or maintain the 15 PHEP capabilities outlined in the Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Capabilities: National Standards for State, Local, Tribal, and Territorial Public Health.
PHEP funding supports the Public Health Districts (PHDs) with preparing for disaster and emergencies, and the disruptions that affect their communities. Activities include providing local training events, exercises, and working with local partners, such as county emergency managers, to ensure the safety of Idahoans during a public health emergency.
Resources:
The PHEP program works to coordinate with tribal partners in assessing their needs, planning priorities, and developing their capabilities and resources. PHEP serves to aid tribal nations through exercises, plan evaluation, and response efforts.
Tribes
Resources
The HPP provides assistance to healthcare systems in preparing for, responding to, and recovering from the adverse health effects of emergencies and disasters. The HPP aims to improve patient outcomes, minimizing the need for federal and supplemental state resources during emergencies, and facilitating rapid recovery through a regional disaster health response system.
The program identifies four capabilities to prepare a healthcare system to respond to an event:
- Foundation for Healthcare and Medical Readiness
- Healthcare and Medical Response Readiness
- Continuity of Healthcare Service Delivery
- Medical Surge
HPP funding primarily supports maintaining healthcare coalitions to plan for coordinated healthcare disaster response.
In Idaho, there are three regional healthcare coalitions (RHCC):
- North Idaho Health Care Coalition
- Western Idaho Health Care Coalition
- Greater Idaho Health Care Coalition
The coalitions collaborate with a variety of stakeholders to obtain the above capabilities. These stakeholders include their core coalition members, which are
hospitals, emergency medical services (including inter-facility and non-EMS transport), emergency management, and PHDs.
Contacts
- North Idaho Healthcare Coalition:
- Nick Mechikoff - nicholas.mechikoff@kh.org
- Steven Turcott - steven.turcott@kh.org
- Western Idaho Healthcare Coalition:
- Shelby Frazier - shelby.frazier@saintalphonsus.org
- Kathryn Quinn - kathryn.quinn@saintalphonsus.org
- Greater Idaho Healthcare Coalition:
- Ryan Richardson - ryan.richardson01@portmed.org
- Parker Williams - parker.williams@portmed.org
The Idaho Resource Tracking System (IRTS) is a tool for information sharing among at members of Idaho’s Health Care Coalitions. Built on Juvare’s EMResource platform, IRTS provides a platform for users to post regular updates about capacity and capabilities of hospitals, EMS agencies, pharmacies, residential long-term care facilities, and other. When needed, requests for more timely updates can be pushed to users so the most recent data is available to local and regional members of a medical community.
Initially created to help identify where available hospital beds were located, IRTS has also been used to respond to medication shortages and connect patients to post-acute care. IRTS is now able to push data from local facilities, who chose to do so, to HHS systems to meet some facility level CMS required reporting. Access is restricted to members of Idaho’s healthcare coalitions, so shared data remains within the medical and emergency management communities. Please contact your regional healthcare coalition coordinator, or HospitalBedTracking@dhw.idaho.gov, if your agency does not have an IRTS account or needs support general using the platform. Behavioral Health users should contact IPBSR@dhw.idaho.gov for specialized support. Users can access the system or reset their own password at the IRTS Login Page.
Volunteer Idaho (VI) is a volunteer management tool used by Idaho’s seven local public health districts to manage their Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) units. MRC Units use Volunteer Idaho to communicate with volunteers, verify licenses and certifications, and even track time spent training or responding to community needs. The system helps local public health ensure their medical volunteers are properly credentialed and exercised before an incident, so the public can be better served and be confident in the training and knowledge of responders.
Along with managing volunteers during training and response, Volunteer Idaho is also Idaho’s Emergency System for Advance Registration of Volunteer Health Professions. This is a program set up after 9/11 to help volunteer emergency responders step up before an emergency, so emergency management can draw on a pool of medical professionals who are already known and vetted.
Full details, including maps to help you identify your local MRC unit, are available at https://www.volunteeridaho.com/. Registered and prospective volunteers should contact their MRC Unit Leader for support.