OMAHA- With a boost of federal funds, the University of Nebraska Medical Center will help lead development of a new national planning approach to responding to large-scale health crises. Officials announced the effort to be launched with an initial $500,000 from the National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health, whose mission is to advance the nation’s public health readiness for disasters.

The medical center and its main clinical partner, Nebraska Medicine, are to convene federal agencies and others across academia and industry to develop a more proactive plan, based on worst case and large-scale scenarios, for meeting medical and public health requirements during national emergencies. The goal is to be prepared and not have to build on the fly when difficult times arise.

The new approach will consider a range of things, UNMC officials said, including ways to rapidly develop and deploy therapeutics and options to quickly hire, train and retain more clinical staff, especially when the types of licensed professionals are unavailable. The project fits well with the previous work that has been done in the Global Center for Health Security department.

For the full article click HERE