There is a guide for schools that will assist them in creating Business Continuity plans that says it will address All-Hazards. The document was created by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. This agency is a branch of HHS. The document itself can be found at:

http://www.ahrq.gov/prep/schoolprep/school3.htm.

This is an excellent approach for most hazards. It is well thought out and incorporates many best practices that Business Continuity professionals use every day.

However, it is not quite an all hazards approach. It does not take into account the specific problems that will arise if schools are faced with a pandemic.

What if schools are asked to close during a pandemic? In Missouri, schools have a mandate that that need to teach, even though the physical buildings have been closed. This can be accomplished through use of e-mail and internet interactions between students and teachers. That has led to criticism that not all students have access to computers at home, but since an overwhelming majority of students do have home access to the internet, that may unfortunately be the best we can do. There may be a way to identify those that don’t have internet access, and develop a methodology of mailing assignments back and forth. This would be costly to invoke for all students, but might be easier to do if it were limited to those students that request it.

Pandemic preparedness in the schools means being prepared for school closures of 12 weeks at a time, as recommended by the CDC.

HHS published a document on Community Disease Control and Prevention during a pandemic. They identified school closures as one method they would use to curb the spread of a novel influenza virus. http://www.hhs.gov/pandemicflu/plan/sup8.html#_ftn3.

My last blog, I mentioned the State pandemic preparedness assessment performed by the Homeland Security Council.  I decided to take that data and try to make sense out of it all, to determine which states were the most prepared and which were the least prepared.

Giving each of the categories equal importance, I simply counted the number of cells for each state that were Fully Prepared, Mostly Prepared, etc, and gave each one a weight accordingly.  Each Fully Prepared received a 4, Mostly prepared received a 3, and so on.  The results are listed below.

The bottom line, there are some states are are VERY prepared, which is good to see, and some states that are HORRIBLY unprepared, so I guess the key is to hope you live in a state that is well prepared.  My condolences if you live in a state that doesn’t want to face the reality of the moment.

Here are the states that are best prepared, based upon my completely unscientific findings: 

Arizona, Wisconsin and Arkansas are in the best shape, all scoring 90 or above.  They are closely followed by Indiana, Delaware, Virginia, Alabama, California and Rhode Island.  (Missouri, the state I’m from,is 16th with a score of 78, so that’s not so bad….)

Now for the bad news (for somebody).  The states that have done almost nothing for a pandemic (at least according to the Homeland Security Council) are: North Carolina, Hawaii, Montana, Georgia, South Dakota, Nevada, Vermont, Mississippi and Kentucky.  I do find it sad that none of these states are as prepared as Puerto Rico is, although that’s good news for the people of Puerto Rico.

If your state wasn’t listed above, then you at least can take some comfort that you’ve got a partial plan in place.  If your state isn’t in the top list of prepared states, then you should consider contacting your political friends and ask them why.  Lives are at stake, and it is their job to make sure they are planning adequately for the pandemic we all know is coming.

This table was compiled from information provided in the link from my last blog.  Please refer to that link if you want to see the data.

Thanks.

Harlan Dolgin
www.dolginconsulting.com

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

Its a little premature to be too alarmed, but I just saw a news report from January 23 that said that Canada may have had its first outbreak of H5N1 on a Turkey farm in British Columbia.  See the link below for more details.

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/influenza/avianflu/news/jan2309avian-jw.html

IF it turns out to be true, and at this point it’s just suspected, then it may be a major turning point.  This will be the first case of high pathegin H5N1 in North America.  There was a case of low pathegin H5N1 in Virginia a few years ago, but low pathegin H5N1 is not dangerous to people.  High pathegin is the kind that is in the news, that can be deadly to people.

If it is confirmed to be high pathegin H5N1, then it may be just a matter of time before it makes its way into the U.S.  Experts have long thought that the migratory pattern of wild birds would bring H5N1 to the U.S. sooner or later, and the government checks many thousands of migratory birds every year to see if they have H5N1.  So far, they haven’t found any, but that may soon change. 

This is a wake up call that everyone needs to begin preparing for a pandemic.  At the least, people should start gathering extra food, water and medicine, learn and begin using proper hygiene, and consider how a pandemic might affect your family -  Will your job be affected?  Can you work from home?  What if schools close?  I’ll discuss all of this in a future blog, or feel free to e-mail me your questions at hdolgin@dolginconsulting.com to learn more.

Thanks.

Harlan Dolgin
Dolgin Consulting

Preparing for a pandemic is an essential part of any company’s Business Continuity Program.  The experts agree that a pandemic is coming, and most business continuity plans (unless you have an advanced plan) do not address the unavailability of people – usually a BC plan involves the movement of people from one location to another location.

First, you need to develop a list of planning assumptions.  Most experts will tell you to plan for 30-40% absenteeism during the height of the pandemic.  They also say there is likely to be 3 waves of a pandemic.  These should become part of your assumptions.

Second, you should develop a list of activites you will undertake leading up to a pandemic (actions to take right now) and activities to perform when the pandemic comes.  There are guides that will assist you in planning at the following locations:

PandemicPrep.Org Resource Guide

PandemicFlu.Gov Planning Guide

Missouri DHSS Ready in 3 Planning Guides

Next, once you’ve developed a plan, it is important that you communicate the plan to your employees, so that they know what to expect from your company during a pandemic.  You should also be prepared to communicate to all stakeholders about your plans.  This would include customers, vendors, shareholders, board members, and employees.

Also, your employees should be educated so that they can begin to prepare their families at home for a pandemic.  They should consider now what would happen if the schools and day cares would close, have they begun to gather two weeks food (p.7 of PandemicFlu.Gov/Planning Guide) and 3 days of water supplies – the link above recommends two weeks for both food and water, but storing two weeks of water at 1 gallon of water per person per day is unrealistic - that would be 64 gallons of water for a family of 4).

Obviously, We can’t cover everything you should do during a pandemic, but I hope I’ve given you some guidance and identified some helpful resources that you can review to begin preparing.  The main thing is to start preparing if you haven’t done so already.

If you are researching how to plan, but you don’t want to build the plan yourself, feel free to e-mail me at hdolgin@dolginconsulting.com or visit our website at Dolgin Consulting to see what it would cost to have us build your plan for you.

Thanks.

Harlan Dolgin, CBCP
Independent Consultant
Dolgin Consulting