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Public health emergency the focus of recent exercise at UofL
UofL administrators at the tabletop exercise.
March 2016
On March 3, UofL administrators and local partners participated in a tabletop exercise designed to increase preparedness for a coordinated response to an infectious disease outbreak on campus. Using a hypothetical scenario that reflected clusters of serious bacterial meningitis cases on a number of US college campuses over the past two years, attendees identified methods to protect our campus community and proposed strategies to enhance internal and external coordination and communication.
The exercise was jointly developed by the UofL Department of Environmental Health and Safety (DEHS), the School of Public Health and Information Sciences (SPHIS), and the Division of Infectious Diseases in the School of Medicine. Drs. Paul McKinney and Scott LaJoie, from the SPHIS Center for Health Hazards Preparedness, were members of the exercise team.
“Tabletop exercises are an effective strategy used to plan for public health emergencies,” said Dr. McKinney. “The simulation we put together enabled UofL to identify strengths and weaknesses of our current systems and to strengthen planning and response capabilities.”
The event lasted approximately four hours and involved 45 participants, including university leadership and representatives from UofL offices including Campus Health Services, Communications and Marketing, Human Resources, Student Affairs, Athletics, Physical Plant, Public Safety, and Residence Administration. Local agencies that joined the discussion were the Louisville Metro Department of Public Health and Wellness, Kentucky Department for Public Health, and the Louisville Metro Emergency Management Agency. Mr. James Caesar, Emergency Preparedness Manager at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was part of the frontline response to a recent meningitis outbreak on his campus, worked with the exercise team to plan and execute the exercise scenario.
