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BACKGROUND: With every natural or man-made disaster, there has been a need for health and public health (PH) data to provide planners, incident commanders and policy makers with information to make decisions, allocate resources, and provide situational awareness on the health of the affected community. Recent innovations in disaster epidemiology have enhanced PH preparedness and response to large-scale incidents and natural disasters.
METHODS: The Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE) Disaster Epidemiology Subcommittee gathered recent examples of innovations in disaster epidemiology by local, state, and federal governments and other partners in preparation for the annual CSTE Disaster Epidemiology Workshop held in May.
RESULTS: The CSTE Disaster Epidemiology Subcommittee identified applications of technology, social media, new collaborations with partner organizations, and toolkits as innovations for collecting health data during disasters. Examples include the use of iPads to conduct a Community Assessment for Public Health Emergency Response (CASPER) in a cross-border collaboration between Tennessee and Kentucky in 2013 and utilizing a mobile application of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Epi Info™ 7.0 to take advantage of smartphone technology. With increased use of social media, health departments find ways to access information to assess post-disaster health of affected communities and to monitor disaster-related mortality. One example of utilizing social media during a disaster is Operation DragonFire, a cloud-based, participatory platform used to collect and disseminate real-time accurate information received during an emergency. Additionally, partnerships with the American Red Cross and use of electronic health records facilitate the collection of mortality and morbidity data during and following a disaster, such as Hurricane Sandy. The information generated using these innovations can directly inform decision-making on behavioral, clinical, and environmental actions that can mitigate illness, injury, disability, and death.
CONCLUSIONS: This presentation will provide a general overview and highlight current examples of innovations in disaster epidemiology that can assist national, state, territorial and local epidemiologists with enhancing their preparedness and response capabilities.