January 2025 CT HCC Newsletter

What was your favorite conference session you attended and why?

A few of the breakout sessions and one of the keynote sessions really spoke to me.  Those were “Positive Mindset & Building Resilience for Life – Day 1 Keynote Speaker Brandon Webb; and the following breakout sessions: “ASPR Tools and Resources”, “Environmental Justice and Civil Rights Considerations in Emergency Preparedness”*, “NWS Resources for Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Service to Vulnerable Populations”, “Staff vs. Stuff – The Dilemma”, and last but not least “Diversity and Empowerment: A New Model for Coalition Partnerships."

My favorite session was the one with the asterisk: “Environmental Justice and Civil Rights Considerations in Emergency Preparedness.”  The presenter Tim Gablehouse is an attorney, and an emergency planner, and was an excellent speaker.  He commented that “the lack of community awareness with our planning is a fundamental gap that must be addressed.  It is an obligation!”  After Hurricane Katrina it became evident that there hadn’t been any meaningful community involvement in the planning process.  Everyone has a “civil right” to knowledge of the existence of an adequate emergency planning process.  Meaningful community involvement is the key.  The planners and the decision makers must facilitate participation of the community.  This obligation is the most common failure.  There is no such thing as a “good faith effort” with local emergency planning if the community was completely involved from the start.  Evacuations and sheltering are the big ones!  We need to work to create reasonable expectations in our planning efforts.  He stressed we should only spend time and energy on identified community gaps, and then be sure to properly focus with the limited resources we have.  If the mandate is unclear, he stated to look at ADA.gov to gain an understanding.  In addition to the ADA emergency planners must also consider the Civil Rights Act.  He recommended the FEMA documents “Developing and Maintaining Emergency Operations Plans (CPG 101, Ver. 3.0, September 2021)” and “Local Elected and Appointed Officials Guide: Roles and Resources in Emergency Management, September 2022” as good planning guides to assist in meeting our obligations, and as he put it “support equitable and comprehensive disaster preparedness, response and recovery”.  I will be sharing the highlights from this talk during January’s Region 3 ESF8 meeting

What are some lesson(s) you want to bring back to your role and/or the CT HCC?

As a local health emergency preparedness coordinator and educator, the key lessons I bring back for my local planning tables, and my health district are: Both the National Weather Service (NWS) Presentation and the Environmental Justice Presentation offered some key information that would greatly enhance our “local” emergency planning – at the health district, and in the town of Burlington and the city of Bristol.  I plan on sharing the presentations with the EMDs of both of the jurisdictions I serve, and plan to meet with them early in the New Year as we review our current plans.  I also plan on sharing copies of the presentations with my Director of Health.

As a member of the Region 3 ESF8 and the CT HCC, the key lessons I bring back are:  I feel that we in CT are very fortunate to have so many diverse and active members in our coalition, most notably local public health. Many of the sessions I attended spoke of the diverse coalition membership they had yet only one that I attended spoke of local health as being an active planning partner – (“Diversity and Empowerment: A New Model for Coalition Partnership”, Speaker: Greg Santa Maria – about what was being done in his coalition in South Dakota).  I attended a breakout session on the first day entitled “Community Coalition Building – Bringing Together Fire, Police and Healthcare.”  Where was Local Health do you ask?  Well, I asked and the comment made by the healthcare individual was “we don’t plan with them” which I found quite puzzling.  What did they do during the pandemic?  How is their state providing funding for HCC’s that don’t include one of the 4 key partners (HC, PH, EMS & EM)?   I never got an answer.

Please include any additional comments/lessons learned that the group could benefit from. 

I found the entire conference to be a great networking experience, not only with members of our state team that were in attendance, but I was also able to reconnect with some colleagues from my earlier days in Public Health Preparedness when I was at DPH.

One additional thing I found interesting was that while Local Health was mentioned in a few of the sessions I attended, their roles were primarily seen as housing organizations for Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) units, and used to support a local healthcare system that was getting inundated with individuals who needed power to operate medical equipment.  Not quite sure of the latter as the local municipality would open “charging stations/center” where individuals could not only charge their cell phones and PC’s but also medical equipment that needed electricity to operate.  If those individuals needed medical care, it would be more suitable to have them placed in a medical environment, rather than a charging station/center.

In the coming year I would like to really look at ways that local health can be more involved in the CT HCC, whether it be through the MRC, or assisting the hospitals and healthcare systems within their jurisdictions with their emergency planning, or reconnecting with their local EMS Agencies and seeing where we can provide that ESF8 support in those local and regional emergency plans, to name a few.

Thanks again for the opportunity to attend this National Conference with a CT HCC scholarship.