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Web Conference Call Series

Bioterrorism and Other Public Health Emergencies

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is conducting a series of free Web-assisted conference calls on bioterrorism and health system preparedness. These 90-minute Web conferences are designed to share the latest health services research findings, promising practices, and other important information with State and local health officials and key health systems decisionmakers.

2005 Series

Mass Casualty Care: Overlooked Community Resources

This program focused on potential resources for providing mass casualty care beyond the emergency department—in nursing homes, former (shuttered or converted) hospitals, and primary care networks and clinics.

It is designed to help a number of stakeholders—policymakers, planners and other decisionmakers at the Federal, State and local levels, program administrators, health system decisionmakers, and health care providers—by providing information about the latest research, tools and models that can help them draw quickly and effectively upon community resources that go beyond existing hospital capacity.

Mass Casualty Care: Overlooked Community Resources (May 17, 2005).

2004 Series

Surge Capacity and Health System Preparedness

Surge capacity is a health care system's ability to rapidly expand beyond normal services to meet the increased demand for qualified personnel, medical care, and public health in the event of bioterrorism or other large-scale public health emergencies or disasters.

The 2004 series includes three topics:

Addressing Surge Capacity in a Mass Casualty Event (October 26, 2004).
Surge Capacity and Health System Preparedness: Facilities and Equipment (July 13, 2004).
Surge Capacity and Health System Preparedness: Education and Training for a Qualified Workforce (March 2, 2004).

2003 Series

Topics for the first five calls were:

Smallpox Immunization Issues, Strategies, and Tools (March 3, 2003).
Disaster Planning and Readiness Assessment (April 15, 2003).
Surge Capacity Assessments and Regionalization Issues (June 17, 2003).
The Role of Information/Communication Technology and Monitoring/Surveillance Systems in Bioterrorism Preparedness (October 21, 2003).
Bioterrorism and Other Public Health Emergencies: Linkages with Community Providers (December 16, 2003).

Additional Program Information

If you have any substantive questions about AHRQ's bioterrorism and health system preparedness program, contact:

Dr. Sally Phillips
Director, Bioterrorism Preparedness Research Program
Center for Primary Care Research
Phone: (301) 427-1571
E-mail: SPhillip@ahrq.gov

Deactivation Notice: Program Announcement PAR-03-130
Building the Evidence to Promote Bioterrorism and Other Public Health Emergency Preparedness in Health Care Systems.

We regret that no funds are available for these grants in 2004. Given the uncertainty of future research grant funds for this initiative, the Program Announcement has been deactivated. AHRQ will not be accepting applications for the January 2005 or 2006 receipt dates.

Current as of October 2005

Internet Citation:

Web Conference Call Series: Bioterrorism and Other Public Health Emergencies. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, Rockville, MD. http://www.ahrq.gov/news/ulp/biotconf.htm