title: Lessons learned from North Carolina public health regional surveillance teams' regional exercises.
abstract: All-hazards exercises bring together emergency response partners at the local, regional, state, and federal levels for the primary purposes of testing response plans, defining roles and responsibilities, assessing capabilities, and making necessary improvements prior to an actual incident. To better understand the benefits and challenges of conducting regional (ie, multicounty) exercises, a study was carried out by the North Carolina Preparedness and Emergency Response Research Center at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Global Public Health. This article describes 5 all-hazards regional exercises conducted by Public Health Regional Surveillance Teams (PHRSTs) in North Carolina in 2009 and highlights 4 unique benefits that resulted from the exercises beyond meeting explicit objectives to test plans and identify areas for improvement: (1) building relationships among response partners, (2) promoting public health assets, (3) testing multiple communications systems, and (4) training exercise evaluators. Challenges of planning and conducting regional exercises also are addressed, followed by recommendations for maximizing the effectiveness of regional public health exercises.
authors.affiliation: University of North Carolina Center for Public Health Preparedness, North Carolina Institute for Public Health, Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, USA. jhegle@unc.edu
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hegle
authors.forename: Milissa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Markiewicz
authors.forename: Philip
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Benson
authors.forename: Jennifer
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Horney
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Rosselli
authors.forename: Pia
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: MacDonald
mesh_terms: D002959:Civil Defense / Q000379:methods* / Q000458:organization & administration; D003142:Communication; D004189:Disaster Planning / Q000379:methods* / Q000458:organization & administration; D040381:Education, Public Health Professional / Q000379:methods; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D009657:North Carolina; D011159:Population Surveillance; D055818:Public-Private Sector Partnerships