title: Promoting community preparedness: lessons learned from the implementation of a chemical disaster tabletop exercise.
abstract: Health educators are frequently called on to facilitate community preparedness planning. One planning tool is community-wide tabletop exercises. Tabletop exercises can improve the preparedness of public health system agencies to address disaster by bringing together individuals representing organizations with different roles and perspectives in specific disasters. Thus, they have the opportunity to identify each other's roles, capabilities, and limitations and to problem-solve about how to address the gaps and overlaps in a low-threat collaborative setting. In 2005, the North Carolina Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response developed a series of exercises to test the preparedness for chemical disasters in a metropolitan region in the southeastern United States. A tabletop exercise allowed agency heads to meet in an environment promoting inter- and intraagency public-private coordination and cooperation. The evaluation results reported here suggest ways in which any tabletop exercise can be enhanced through recruitment, planning, and implementation.
authors.affiliation: Clinical Laboratories, Duke University Health System in Durham, North Carolina, USA.
authors.forename: Erika H
authors.initials: EH
authors.lastname: High
authors.forename: Kay A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Lovelace
authors.forename: Bruce M
authors.initials: BM
authors.lastname: Gansneder
authors.forename: Robert W
authors.initials: RW
authors.lastname: Strack
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Callahan
authors.forename: Phillip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Benson
mesh_terms: D055884:Chemical Hazard Release / Q000517:prevention & control*; D003159:Community-Institutional Relations; D004189:Disaster Planning / Q000379:methods* / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006285:Health Planning / Q000379:methods* / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006293:Health Promotion; D006801:Humans; D007373:Interinstitutional Relations; D009657:North Carolina; D011322:Primary Prevention / Q000458:organization & administration; D016730:Program Development; D015980:Public Health Practice; D015144:Southeastern United States