CIP
Update
March
17, 2006
This
newsletter is for cities, counties and communities involved in
public-private partnerships for joint emergency preparedness, planning
and prevention.
Michigan
State University produces the newsletter through the Critical Incident Protocol
(CIP)-Community Facilitation Program under a grant awarded by the
Office of Grants & Training, Preparedness Directorate,
U.S.
Department of Homeland Security. This newsletter provides
ideas, suggestions, best practices and lessons learned to establish
critical incident protocols using public-private partnerships.
Please go to www.cip.msu.edu for more
information about the program.
Participating
Communities
Allentown,
PA / Annapolis, MD / Bethlehem,
PA / Brooklyn,
OH / Carroll County, MD / Casa Grande, AZ / Clark
County, NV / Evansville,
IN / Hoover, AL / Marquette
County, MI / Milwaukee, WI / Monroe
County, MI / Northampton County, PA / Oakland County, MI / Perkiomen
Valley, PA / Redmond, WA
/ Racine, WI / Richmond, VA / Rockville, MD / Sandy City, UT
We are
currently working
with 20 communities and will work
with another 24 cities, counties or communities over the next couple of
years. Of the 24 available CIP
Programs, we are in contact
with 10 communities. Is there a
location in the nation that you think may be
interested in building a public-private partnership for joint emergency
preparedness?
Recently,
one of the CIP staff shared this concept on the difference between the
public and private sectors.
Business
tends to maximize its available resources on a minimum set of objects.
Government
distributes its limited resources over a broad range of objectives.
Join MSU at the Midwest Summit Conference for Public/Private
Partnerships
A Midwest
Summit titled “Economics of Disaster”, which will enhance critical
incident preparedness through public/private partnerships, is scheduled
for May 3-4, 2006 in LaCrosse, WI. For more on the conference, please go to www.midwestsummit2006.com
Creating successful
public-private partnerships is an essential key in identifying,
addressing, and resolving issues concerning preparedness and continuity
in today’s business world. The Midwest Summit will provide
opportunities for innovation and investment in resilience and economic
sustainability for both private businesses and government
infrastructure. This two-day seminar will focus on establishing
formal coordinated agreements, networking, information sharing, crime
prevention, resource sharing, training, legislation, operations,
establishing regional information command centers and coordinating the
flow of information regarding infrastructure all in an effort to
promote crisis preparedness and homeland security.
MSU staff from the CIP
Program will be presenting at this conference.
Attitudes of our Professions – The CIP Program
Those of
you who have participated in the CIP Program know we use a research
model called the Social Capital Survey that captures information about public
and private partnerships in the communities. More specifically,
the survey assesses perceptions about community groups, as well as
public governmental agencies regarding the working and developing of
partnerships to solve community problems. We measure the level of
networking for critical incident preparedness. The survey is
confidential and anonymous!
One aspect
of the model reports on attitudes of the public and private sector
participants. MSU administers two surveys for each community that
are about 8 to 12 months apart. This time period allows the
community to start enhancing the partnership for joint critical
incident preparedness. Many of the participants in each community
will start working together on various aspects of emergency
preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery.
One of the
larger challenges faced by communities, organizations, agencies,
businesses, and individuals is to influence attitudes of those who are
resistant. Sometimes these attitudes may reflect a “stovepipe”
mentality. The CIP Program works to break down resistance by
creating stronger networks.
Let’s take
a look at our recent survey results. We used a scale of 1 being
strongly disagree to 5 being strongly agree and the results reflect the
participant’s attitudes toward the other community representatives:
Security/Police:
Pre-test of 3.72 and Post-test of 3.80
Business/Corporate
Fire Protection: Pre-test of 3.11 and Post-test of 3.35
Fire
Protection/Fire Services: Pre-test of 4.15 and
Post-test of 4.23
Risk
Management: Pre-test of 3.03 and Post-test of
3.30
Mental Health
Professionals: Pre-test of 2.99 and Post-test of 3.05
These
reflect some of the professions we measured, and as you can see the
attitudes towards others increase at the post-test, which illustrates
the value of partnership building.
Ethics in a Pandemic Plan
The
discussion of ethics in critical incident management by public safety
officials, business professionals, non-profit leaders, and community
stakeholders can either move to the lower level of priorities or become
quagmire. For those of you who want an excellent resource on
ethics in the public sector, please refer to the Stand on Guard for Thee – Ethical
Considerations in Preparedness Planning for Pandemic Influenza
report published by the University of Toronto Joint Centre for
Bioethics, Pandemic Influenza Working Group.
When an
influenza pandemic strikes the world many people, ranging from
government and medical leaders to health care workers, will face a host
of difficult decisions that will affect people’s freedoms and their
chances of survival. As stated in the report, “Government and
health care leaders need to make the values behind their decisions
public. Openly discussing the choices and confirming that they
are based on ethical values that are shared by members of a society
brings important benefits. If ethics are clearly built….in an
open and transparent manner, and with buy-in from multiple sectors of
society, the plans carry trust, authority and legitimacy.” (Strand on
Guard for Thee, 2006, pg. 3)
The working group came up with four key
ethical issues that need to be addressed, which are:
1.
Workers’
duty to provide care during a communicable disease outbreak;
2.
Restricting
liberty in the interest of public health by measures, such as
quarantines;
3.
Priority
setting, including the allocation of scarce resources, such as vaccines
and antiviral medicines; and
4.
Global
governance implications, such as travel advisories. (Stand on Guard for
Thee, 2006, pg. 1)
Though this
report reflects the medical profession, it equally has merit for all
public-private sector decision makers who are tasked with responding to
emergencies. To read the report, please go to http://www.utoronto.ca/jcb/home/documents/pandemic.pdf
Profile on Public/Private Partnership Organization – TISP
We continue to spread the
word and value of partnerships or coalitions, such as The
Infrastructure Security Partnership (TISP), which was created shortly
after September 11, 2001 by eleven professional/technical organizations
and federal agencies.
TISP represents the
design and construction communities, in addition to local, state and
federal agencies. TISP looks to itself as a national organization
focusing on improving the resilience of the nation’s critical
infrastructure. TISP formed a task force for regional disaster
resilience and published their Guide
for an Action Plan to Develop Regional Disaster Resilience
report on February 15, 2006. Please refer to their website at http://www.tisp.org
to learn about their organization. You can download this 26-page
guide at http://www.tisp.org/rdr_guide
Recent Postings to CIP
Information Exchange Website
To enter the "CIP Information Exchange" website, please go to
https://angel.msu.edu and enter your user/password
ID (or
use msu.msu@angel in the User/NetID and
"partnership" as the password to log in). Click on CIP, which
launches to the main menu.
Located in
the folder "Bulletin Board - Information for all Communities" are just
a few of the following postings:
There are
numerous other resources located on the website. To locate a
specific topic, use the "search" function, which can be found on the
main menu page on the right-hand side in the green task bar.
Starting
a CIP Program
Feel free
to make a referral to the MSU staff about possibly starting a CIP
Program elsewhere in the United States. We can use your
assistance!
Past
Newsletters
If you are interested in
viewing past CIP Update
newsletters, please go to www.cip.msu.edu and select
“Newsletters” from the main menu.
Closing
If you have
any topics and/or ideas for a future
CIP Update
newsletter, please contact Brit Weber at weberbr@msu.edu or (517) 355-2227 or other MSU staff
members. About every three weeks you will receive this
newsletter via email. If you no longer want to be on this list,
please reply to this email.
Sources
University
of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, Pandemic Influenza Work Group
Report. Stand on Guard for
Thee – Ethical Considerations in Preparedness
Planning for Pandemic Influenza.
(November 2005).
Brit
Weber
School
of Criminal Justice
Michigan
State University
1407
S. Harrison Rd., 335 Nisbet Bldg.
East
Lansing, MI 48823
Work:
(517) 355-2227 Cell: (517) 206-1640
weberbr@msu.edu
Visit
our website: http://www.cip.msu.edu