Federal initiative increases community preparedness for public health emergencies.
Policy makers need to know whether federal programs can improve community-level readiness for large-scale public health emergencies, and how to design such programs to increase their impact. This article describes an evaluation of the Cities Readiness Initiative, a federal program to improve communities' ability to dispense medications rapidly during emergencies. The program helped increase staffing, improve planning and partnerships, and streamline medication-dispensing procedures. The evaluation results indicate that clear goals, technical assistance, and a balance between threat-specific and more-general "all hazards" planning might improve the effectiveness of federal readiness programs.
RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, California, USA. cnelson@rand.org
Christopher D
CD
Nelson
Henry H
HH
Willis
Edward W
EW
Chan
Shoshana R
SR
Shelton
Andrew M
AM
Parker
D019058:Community Networks; D004189:Disaster Planning; D006078:Government Programs; D006801:Humans; D015397:Program Evaluation; D011634:Public Health