Basic Public Health Approaches
Example
In the event of a weather emergency where the population is being evacuated, school health nurses may be able to be diverted to shelter duty, while surveillance activities would need to continue (and probably increase in scope and intensity.)
As mentioned earlier, public health is an emergency response agency. Emergency readiness is a core function of public health and part of its basic mission to promote physical and mental health and prevent disease, injury and disability3 . During emergency response, public health has a particular challenge. It must not only respond to the event, but must also maintain essential services to the community. The DOH must be able to (in some instances quickly) decide what services can be interrupted and which must be maintained, even during the event. Always remember that personnel need to be assigned to the emergency response, but some personnel will usually need to be assigned to maintain essential public health services.
3 Public Health Functions Steering Committee. Public Health in America. http://www.health.gov/ phfunctions/public.cfm. Accessed March 8, 2005.