Academy Awards Grants to Involve the Public in Terrorism Preparedness Planning

NEW YORK, Aug. 3 - Having documented that terrorism response plans developed without the public put millions of Americans unnecessarily at risk, The New York Academy of Medicine is now acting to correct the problem. With funding from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Academy will work with four U.S. communities to demonstrate how plans to respond to a smallpox outbreak and dirty bomb explosion can be improved so that many more people will be protected from harm if these or other related events unfold. The model plans and public engagement practices that come out of the project will make communities around the country more socially and economically resilient from any risk they face.

The communities that were selected to participate in the demonstration projects include the City of Carlsbad and South Eddy County, New Mexico; the Humboldt Park neighborhood on the near northwest side of Chicago, Illinois; the Eastside neighborhood in Savannah, Georgia; and Choctaw, McCurtain, and Pushmataha Counties in Southeast Oklahoma.

???We???re going to benefit even if a smallpox outbreak or dirty bomb explosion never occurs in our community??? says Mike Reynolds, Fire Chief of the City of Carlsbad, one of the demonstration sites. ???Planning without public involvement is flawed planning. We???ll be able to use the response strategies we develop in this project to protect the residents of Carlsbad and South Eddy County in the event of other emergencies, like pandemic flu, SARS, pipeline explosions, chemical spills, or electrical blackouts. And what we learn about identifying residents??? issues and concerns will help us improve our responses to tornadoes, floods, and gas well blowouts.???

According to Otis Johnson, Mayor of Savannah, another demonstration site, ???This is going to do a lot for the trust issue, too. Up till now, the people who live in Savannah have been left out of the city???s planning process. But as they become involved, through groups like the Eastside Neighborhood Alliance, they???ll know, firsthand, that planners are listening to them. And when they help planners develop strategies that protect them as much as possible from the risks and concerns they???ll actually face, I bet they???ll have a lot more confidence in what I and other officials tell them to do in an emergency.???

The demonstration projects build on the findings of a groundbreaking study that the Academy???s Center for the Advancement of Collaborative Strategies in Health released last year. Called Redefining Readiness: Terrorism Planning Through the Eyes of the Public, the study found that current plans to respond to smallpox and dirty bomb attacks won???t work as expected and won???t protect large numbers of Americans because planners are not addressing serious risks that the public would face. (The study report is available online.)

???The problem is with the plans, not the people,??? says lead investigator Roz Lasker, M.D., Director of the Center and the Academy???s Division of Public Health. ???We found that only two-fifths of the American people would follow instructions to go to a public vaccination site in a smallpox outbreak and only three-fifths would stay inside an undamaged building other than their home after a dirty bomb explosion. But contrary to conventional wisdom, most people have solid, common-sense reasons for not following these instructions; it???s not a matter of ignorance or panic.???

By exploring the reasons for people???s behavior, the study uncovered critical flaws in current plans. Plans to respond to a smallpox outbreak, for example, do not protect the 50 million Americans who are at risk of developing life-threatening complications from the smallpox vaccine (a group that includes pregnant women, babies under the age of one, people who have ever had skin diseases like eczema, people undergoing chemotherapy or radiation for cancer, and people with HIV). The current strategy is for these people to find out about their risk at a public vaccination site. That means they are being told to leave the safety of their own home - a place that the study found most Americans want to be - and go to a place that exposes them to many people who have just been vaccinated and, potentially, to people with smallpox. It???s at that point they find out that they could get seriously ill from getting the vaccine or from coming in contact with a recently vaccinated person.

A major problem with current dirty bomb response plans is that little has been done to create the conditions that make it possible for people to protect themselves by ???sheltering in place.??? People are likely to be separated from other family members - at work, in school, or shopping - when a dirty bomb explosion occurs. The Redefining Readiness study documents that millions of Americans would not follow instructions to stay inside the building they are in unless they are sure that they and their children and spouses are in places that have prepared in advance to take good care of them during the crisis. Unfortunately, very few places have prepared to function as safe havens should the need arise and even fewer places know the kinds of preparations that would actually make people feel safe.

Over the next 18 months, the four demonstration sites will engage their residents, schools, businesses, and government agencies in fixing these problems. Working locally and together they will develop strategies to control a smallpox outbreak effectively without sacrificing the large numbers of people who could get sick or die from the smallpox vaccine. In addition, they will make it possible for the maximum number of people to shelter in place by developing safe haven plans in worksites, schools, and shops that family members have confidence in.

While the demonstration sites will be working locally, sometimes at the neighborhood level, their work will have a much broader reach. ???The strategies we develop in Humboldt Park should end up benefiting everyone in Chicago??? says Eliud Medina, Executive Director of the Near Northwest Neighborhood Network and coordinator for the local demonstration project there. Irvin Jones, chair of the Southeast Oklahoma Champion and Enterprise Communities, believes that many other places around the country will be able to use the model plans and public engagement practices that the demonstration sites develop. ???After all, we???ll be developing strategies that work in places ranging from very rural areas, like mine, to big cities, and we???ll be learning how to involve a broad range of people, including African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanics, and Caucasians.???

Ultimately, a key objective of the demonstration projects is to show the nation how to take advantage of one of its most valuable assets: the common-sense knowledge of the American people and their strong interest in contributing that knowledge to community and organizational planning. ???By doing so, we???ll learn how to get a much better return on the investments we are making in emergency preparedness,??? says the Foundation???s Program Director, Barbara Sabol.

The New York Academy of Medicine, the country???s premier urban health policy and intervention center, focuses on enhancing the health of people living in cities through research, education, advocacy, and prevention. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation was established in 1930 ???to help people help themselves through the practical application of knowledge and resources to improve their quality of life and that of future generations.???

###

Posted on August 3, 2005

 Print   Subscribe

Contact:
Andrew J. Martin
Director of Communications
The New York Academy of Medicine
1216 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10029
212-822-7285
amartin@nyam.org

Press Release Archive