Hello! I thought it would be a good idea to give readers a little information about what I do at the Southeastern District Health Department (SDHD) as we kick off this new feature on our website!

I work in the Public Health Preparedness Program as the Healthcare Liaison. What exactly do I do? I work with hospitals, EMS agencies, community health centers, and other partners to develop a healthcare system approach to emergency response in our area. Healthcare entities have received funding from the Health Resources and Services Administration, and more recently, from the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response.

The group is called the Southeast Idaho Regional Planning Group. This group has been meeting for the past five years to address various medical surge capacity topics such as decontamination, pandemic influenza, mobile medical assets, laboratory needs, communications, and so forth. Their dedication to developing a regional system to assist a community during a disaster is incredible.

I also work as the Chairman of the Southeast Idaho Medical Reserve Corps. We are continually looking for volunteers, medical and non-medical, to assist emergency response efforts for healthcare and public health during infectious disease outbreaks and large-scale disasters. Our unit has just around 200 volunteers made up of nurses, physicians, pharmacists, clerical staff, and HAM radio operators. Communities pull together during a disaster to help one another, but our goal is to provide volunteers with information regarding emergency response to create a more organized response effort if something were to happen in our area.

I thoroughly enjoy what I do and the people that I work with, both at the health district, and the healtcare partners that I've come to know so well in the past five years. Emergency preparedness planning and response will always be an evolving field as we are faced with emerging infectious diseases and the natural disasters, and we learn from each one of them to make the next response a better one. We are making great strides in southeastern Idaho with our planning efforts for preparedness and response.

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