STRATEGIC PLAN - ASPE - U.S. Department of Health and Human ...

CHAPTER 3: Public Health Promotion and Protection, Disease Prevention,and Emergency Preparednesshealth emergencies. HHS also works to ensure thatthe National Disaster Medical System (NDMS), 12 theMedical Reserve Corps (MRC), 13 and the EmergencySystem for Advanced Registration of Volunteer HealthProfessionals (ESAR-VHP) 14 are properly coordinated tomaximize and streamline the response to public healthemergencies.Enhancing response personnel capacity. This processbegins with establishing and maintaining a MedicalReserve Corps to provide for an adequate supply ofvolunteers in the case of a Federal, State, local, or tribalpublic health emergency. HHS is also developing corehealth and medical response curriculums and trainingto improve responses to public health emergencies.Enhancing preparedness through leadership andsupport. HHS efforts enhance State and local publichealth and medical preparedness—primarily healthdepartments and hospitals, providing expert medical,scientific, and public health leadership and advice.HHS also leads international programs, initiatives,and policies that deal with public health and medicalemergency preparedness and response related tonaturally occurring threats such as infectious diseasesand deliberate threats from biologic, chemical, nuclear,and radiation sources. In addition, the Departmentawards contracts, grants, and cooperative agreements,or enters into other transactions, such as prizepayments, to promote innovation in technologies thatmay assist countermeasures and produce advanced12 The NDMS is a federally coordinated system that augmentsthe Nation’s medical response capability. The overall purposeis to establish a single integrated national medical responsecapability for assisting State and local authorities in dealing withthe medical impacts of major peacetime disasters and to providesupport to the military and the VA medical systems in caring forcasualties evacuated back to the United States from overseas armedconventional conflicts.13 The MRC establishes teams of local volunteer medical andpublic health professionals who can contribute their skills andexpertise throughout the year and during times of community need.14 ESAR-VHP works to establish standardized volunteerregistration systems within each State and in the territories that willinclude readily available, verifiable, and up-to-date information ofthe volunteer’s identity, licensing, credentialing, accreditation, andprivileging in hospitals or other medical facilities that might needvolunteers. Establishment of these nationally accepted guidelinesto build their State systems would afford each State the ability toquickly identify, and better utilize, health professional volunteers inemergencies and disasters.86 HHS Strategic Plan FY 2007-2012