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Lieberman Meets at EPH about Bioterrorism and Disaster Preparedness

Bioterrorism and disaster preparedness were the focus of a September 1 meeting between Senator Joseph Lieberman, Yale administrators, state and local health officials and EPH faculty members. The meeting, held at EPH and followed by a press session, focused on the effectiveness of the federal government’s current disaster preparedness efforts and initiatives now underway at EPH and the Connecticut Department of Public Health to prepare public health students and professionals to handle bioterrorism, infectious disease outbreaks and other disasters.

Lieberman said he was motivated to come to EPH in part because its application for a grant to establish an Academic Center for Public Health Preparedness has twice been approved but not funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). To date, the CDC has established 21 Academic Centers for Public Health Preparedness, and this year funded only those previously established centers. The centers, based in schools of public health, are responsible for providing local and regional public health preparedness training and for developing distance learning materials to support such training nationwide. Lieberman said that the U.S. needs more than 21 such centers, and that Connecticut, in particular, should have one. EPH faculty stressed that New Haven is located midway between the two nearest centers, in Boston and New York, in a busy, densely populated northeastern state vulnerable to bioterrorism and other disasters.

Lieberman pledged to Michael H. Merson, M.D., Anna M.R. Lauder Professor and Dean of Public Health, that he would fight for increased funding to deal with the threat of bioterrorism and would organize Connecticut’s congressional delegation to press the CDC to fund Yale’s proposed center.

In addition to voicing his strong support for increased funding for bioterrorism preparedness, Lieberman argued that investments in research into and surveillance of public health threats such as vector-borne West Nile virus yield “a double return,” strengthening the public health infrastructure’s ability to deal with existing problems, while simultaneously boosting its capacity to handle episodes of bioterrorism. Lieberman also emphasized the critical role that well-informed clinicians with good lines of communication to state public health officials play in recognizing and containing infectious disease outbreaks and bioterrorist incidents.

Merson noted that EPH is committed to professional training in public health preparedness and stressed the importance of adequate funding to that effort. To date, EPH has added three courses on disaster preparedness and biohazards to its M.P.H. curriculum and taken a highly collaborative approach to providing various types of preparedness training for public health professionals in the state. Through its partnerships, over 100 courses have been delivered, representing over 3,000 participant contact hours.

-Story by Christy Gordon.