HS Assignment

Public health and medical professionals must respond to public health emergencies quickly. Therefore, they spend a significant amount of time planning their response so they are prepared to address a public health emergency at a moment’s notice. While these plans are regularly practiced to make sure they are effective, it is uncertain if they will work as expected during a large-scale public health emergency. In addition, the response is meant to immediately prevent further damage or illness, but at times, it can create long-term health problems for responders and citizens.

Choose a public health emergency with a prominent disease aspect. Some examples include the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (cancer, respiratory disease, etc.), the 2003 SARS-CoV-1 pandemic, Hurricane Katrina (food- and waterborne illness, mold, etc.), the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak, the 2020 SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, or another public health emergency where you can assess the response.

Write an after action report that summarizes the event, the response, what went well, and what needs to be addressed for future public health emergency response.

• Provide an overview of your chosen public health emergency. Include:

1. A general description of what happened.
2. The geographic location. If the geographic location was worldwide or impacted a broad area, choose a community to discuss. This includes your local community if it was impacted.
3. The populations within the community that were impacted and how they were affected.

• Discuss how public health professionals responded to the public health emergency.

1. List at least three public health organizations (government agencies, community organizations, nonprofits, etc.) that responded. Make sure the main function of the organization is public health activities and they were responsible for responding to the community that was impacted.
2. Describe their role in responding to the public health emergency.

• Explain three challenges public health professionals faced dealing with the emergency in the community.
• Describe at least two ways in which the response went well and two ways in which the response plans should be improved for the future.

Requirements

• Your submission is composed in a Microsoft Word document.
• To meet the objective requirements, your response is at least 500 words in length.
• Your submission includes specific examples of concepts, topics, definitions, and other elements to demonstrate mastery of the objective.
• Your submission includes a highly developed viewpoint and purpose.
• Your response is in Standard English and demonstrates superior organization.
• Your communication is highly ordered, logical, and unified, as well as original and insightful.
• Your submission displays exceptional content, organization, style, and mechanics.
• A separate page at the end of your response contains a list of references.
• Your submission includes in-text citations where appropriate and references for all sources used, following proper APA citation style.
• Please review the APA formatting and citation style in Academic Tools – Academic Writer.