SITUATION:
Coordinated Consulting Services (CCS) was hired in late 2023 by Carson City Health and Human Services (CCHHS) to conduct the Quad-County Public Health Preparedness (PHP) Jurisdictional Risk Assessment (JRA). Quad-County PHP serves Carson City, Douglas, Lyon, and Storey counties and focuses on planning, practicing, and quickly responding to public health threats. Quad-County PHP supports this through continual engagement of and in cooperation with community-based organizations, local and state agencies, the Quad County Healthcare Coalition (QCHCC), and healthcare facilities. The PHP program focuses on public health preparedness planning, training, and exercises initiatives designed to strengthen all-hazards preparedness and response capabilities across the Quad-County region.
NEED:
CCHHS wanted to conduct a JRA to inform preparedness activities and assess the impacts of various threats and hazards facing the public health and health care system within the Quad-County region. The JRA serves as a planning tool for public health, healthcare, and emergency management agencies within the Quad-County region and supports the planning efforts of the QCHCC. The JRA was designed to align with the Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Capabilities, National Standards for State, Local, Tribal, and territorial Public Health Capabilities (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Center for Preparedness and Response, October 2018) and the 2017-2022 Health Care Preparedness and Response Capabilities (Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, November 2016). The CCS team coordinated with local emergency management agencies to ensure the JRA was aligned with current local hazard mitigation plans.
SOLUTION:
CCS took a multi-method approach to identifying and gaining consensus on the top threats and hazards and on gathering the necessary data to conduct the assessment. CCS reviewed and assessed the local hazard mitigation plans, existing hazard vulnerability assessments, and other data sources to develop a list of Quad-County region threats and hazards. CCS worked with CCHHS personnel and local emergency managers to finalize the list of threats and hazards that would likely most affect public health and healthcare emergency preparedness and response.
CCS developed a unique data collection strategy that included a series of worksheets to be completed by various sectors including behavioral health, emergency management, urgent care centers, hospitals, emergency medical services providers, energy provider, pharmacy board, community health centers, and other ancillary data. CCS worked closely with CCHHS to identify specific stakeholders within each sector so that the outreach could be specifically targeted to existing points of contact. The worksheets included a set of instructions, baseline data questions, and questions designed to estimate potential impacts to various human and health care services and resources including behavioral health services, emergency room visits, availability of health care workers, pharmacies, and hospital and clinic visits.
OUTCOME:
CCS worked with over 20 points of contact to complete the worksheets which provided the data for the county-specific data tables in the JRA. The final step of the JRA process involved applying the results to manage risk, including identification of preparedness and mitigation opportunities. Public health and health care partners in the Quad-County region can use the capability targets to inform their ongoing planning, training, and exercises for the region. The resulting 122-page JRA includes information about how the content aligns with public health and healthcare capabilities; the methodology of selecting the top threats and hazards; estimated baseline data and estimated impacts tables; capability targets; results application; and the Quad-County region physical and population characteristics.
