CSTE Disaster Epidemiology Subcommittee: Impacting Disaster Preparedness, Response and Recovery Using Epidemiology

Brief Summary:
Disaster epidemiology plays an important role in the preparedness, response and recovery from disasters that affect communities and have a human health impact. During a disaster, epidemiology plays an important role in all phases of the response and recovery: beginning  with rapid assessment of the health of residents and emergency responders and continues through tracking changes in the needs of impacted communities and evaluation studies and mitigation strategies post-disaster to prevent future health consequences during disasters. The Council for State and Territorial Epidemiologists Disaster Epidemiology Subcommittee brings epidemiologists from local, state, regional, and national levels together to discuss current epidemiological methods, tools, and projects that relate to disaster epidemiology. For example, the subcommittee works with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to promote the Disaster Epidemiology Community of Practice and allows states to report out on recent incidents where disaster epidemiology was utilized such as the fertilizer plant explosion in Texas in April 2013. Currently, the subcommittee is working on a web-based disaster epidemiology toolkit that will enable epidemiologists to easily access tools, resources and publications and is planning for the annual Disaster Epidemiology Workshop that takes place in May. At this year’s 2014 CSTE Annual Conference, we would like to have a roundtable discussion that invites members of the subcommittee and those that would like to learn more about disaster epidemiology to network and discuss current projects and initiatives.