Recently, the results of an analysis of State pandemic preparedness were released with very mixed results.  It was prepared for the Homeland Security Counsel in January 2009.  Below is a link to the full report.

http://pandemicflu.gov/plan/states/state_assessment.html

There are 27 Objectives broken down into three Strategic Goals that the Health and Human Services Department have identified.  States were then evaluated based upon their answers to questionnaires on how far they’ve gotten in each area over the last two years.

The three goals identified were:  A) Ensure Continuity of Operations of State Agencies & Continuity of State Government (with 6 objectives); B) Protect Citizens (14 objectives); and C) Sustain/Support 17 Critical Infrastructure Sectors and Key Resources (7 objectives).

The conlusion states in part:

The findings summarized above indicate that, in the aggregate, the States have made important progress toward preparing for their unique roles in combating an influenza pandemic but have much more to do. Most States have major gaps with respect to most of the 27 Operating Objectives.

This is troubling, given the fact that preparations have been going on since early 2006, and after three years of planning, we still have “major gaps” in our planning within each State of the union.  For example, Missouri has five areas where they have been graded as “Inadequate Preparedness”, and four of those occured within the strategic goal of Protecting Citizens.   They had two other objectives rated as Many Major Gaps (also in the area of Protecting Citizens) and eleven other objectives with a Few Major Gaps.  In only six of the 27 objectives was Missouri rated as No Major Gaps.

A quick review of Table 3 of the report, which identified the status of each State on each of the 27 objectives, indicates that Arizona was among the best prepared, with No Major Gaps in 19 of the 27 areas, and no area received a mark of Inadequate Preparedness.    On the other hand, Hawaii was one of the worst prepared states, with 21 marks of Inadequate Preparedness.

This is certainly an issue that bears closer scrutiny.  You should look up where your state lies on all these preparedness issues, and see if you can convince them to move faster to close all the gaps in planning that currently exist.

Thanks.

Harlan Dolgin
Dolgin Consulting, LLC

Tags: Bird Flu, H5N1, Pandemic, Pandemic Planning, Pandemic Preparedness

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 12:27 am and is filed under Business Continuity, Pandemic, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.