Capacity Statements

Disaster Preparedness and Response Services

Our strategy to enhance disaster preparedness and response focuses on health system resilience and strengthening to meet the needs of facilities or communities whether in the mitigation, preparedness, response, or recovery phases. By working directly with various health facilities; developing and administering training on key topic areas (such as incident command, rapid response training, triage etc); and identifying innovative solutions for implementation within existing health systems, we can enhance effective planning, preparedness, and response.

We focus our activities in two comprehensive domains: Enhancing Response Capacity and Maintaining Essential Services. Size, scope, and duration of the project will be informed by specific project goals and budget. Illustrative activities that can be supported by CGEC, and that are focused on response capacity and maintaining essential services during a disaster are included in the table below.

Maintaining Essential Services

• Laboratory Capacity: Training to build laboratory capacity to optimize.

• Healthcare Worker Strengthening: Enhancing the knowledge, capacity, and resilience of the health care workforce.

• Health Systems Assessments: Guidance on developing and implementing health system wide assessments for supplies such as oxygen and emergency care during a disaster.

• Prehospital: Assessments, training, protocol, and management support related to maintaining optimal function during a disaster.

• Dashboards: Creation of key commodity and human resource dashboards to improve monitoring and management capacity.

• Infection Prevention & Control: Optimization of IPC knowledge, practices, attitudes, and supply chain management.

Enhancing Response Capacity

• Incident Command, Leadership Training: Training through didactics and simulations in incident command and leadership aimed at optimizing performance in the acute phase of response.

• Surge Capacity: Supporting the expansion of surge capacity during a disaster and streamlining policies and procedures for activation

• Triage and Reverse Triage: Implementing or enhancing triage protocols and practices for daily, disaster, and reverse triage, including advanced electronic triage utilizing machine learning

• Simulations, Table-Top Exercises: Assistance in developing and implementing disaster drills and simulations at all levels.

• Knowledge Sharing: Supporting capacity, response, and situational awareness through the organization, amplification, and dissemination of key information

• Forecasting and Modelling: Creating advanced infectious disease modeling utilizing artificial intelligence to optimize readiness, resilience, and responsiveness.

• Facility Based Surveillance: Providing support and training to establish facility-based surveillance systems integrated into emergency medicine to enhance early detection and response.

• Rapid Response Training: Training response teams on essential response skills and adaptations to adequately prepare for multiple hazards and to meet other specified objectives.

• Stakeholder Analysis and Engagement: Facilitating effective disaster planning and response via engagement and alignment with the broader health system, civil society, the private sector, and government entities.

• After Action Reviews of Response: Supporting internal development of templates and processes to complete AARs and effectively implement best practices.

Emergency & Critical Care Capacity Services in CGEC

Increasing Emergency & Critical Care Capacity is a core activity for CGEC that drives directly at the heart of our mission to increase access and improve outcomes. Our strategy focuses on three pillars: education, research, and patient care. In education we strive to train a full spectrum of health professionals in a variety of global settings to become emergency care practitioners and leaders. In research our faculty work at the cutting edge of innovation and have extensive experience collaborating with global partners to perform high-quality research that improves outcomes, influences policy and advances sustainable health development. Finally, direct patient care is our passion and the original calling of all our faculty, the majority of which continue to actively care for patients on a daily basis.

By working directly with clinicians, leaders, researchers, or health facilities; CGEC has the capability to generate and enhance emergency and critical care capacity. Size, scope, and duration of the project will be informed by specific project goals and budget. Illustrative activities that can be supported by CGEC and that are focused on surveillance and response capacity are included in the table below.

Emergency & Critical Care Capacity Interventions

• Curriculum Development: Tailored development of curricula based on local needs to enhance the knowledge, capacity, and resilience of the health care workforce. Flexible delivery through multiple virtual and in-person modalities. Includes any clinical cadre, from technicians and nurses to physicians with specialty training.

• Emergency Department Operations: Assessment of operations and/or training on the nuts and bolts of effective management of an emergency department, including facility design, triage processes, staffing, policies & protocols, laboratory support, radiology utilization and interfaces with other departments, specialties and facilities.

• Intensive Care Unit Operations: Assessment of operations and/or training on the nuts and bolts of effective management of an ICU, including facility design, oxygen ecosystem, technology & diagnostics, staffing, policies & protocols.

• Prehospital and Inter-facility transfers: Assessments, training, protocol, and management support for both lay or professional prehospital and interfacility transfer systems and personnel.

• Triage: Implementation or enhancement of triage protocols and practices for daily and disaster needs; Implementation of WHO Interagency Triage Tool using app-based platforms; Triage training for nurses and ancillary service providers.

• Leadership Training: Specialized training for experienced or up and coming leaders, including a focus on performance and communication skills; managing quality and safety; enhancing patient flow, productivity, and revenue; increasing patient satisfaction; and dealing with staffing issues.

• Short Courses: Implementation of pre-developed short courses such as the WHO/ICRC Basic Emergency Care (BEC) course, the Pediatric Emergency Triage and Treatment course (PedsETAT), as well as customized courses on management of patients with hypoxia, and skills training.

• Quality and Safety: Training and program implementation to reduce preventable harm, improve outcomes and decrease costs.

• Research Capacity: Enhance capacity to create, develop and perform research in an effective, efficient and sustainable manner.

Future Pandemic Preparedness Services in CGEC

Our strategy to enhance future pandemic preparedness focuses on health system resilience and strengthening to meet the needs of communities and develop strategies to promptly detect and respond to disease threats. We focus our activities in three comprehensive domains: Integrated Surveillance in Emergency Medicine, Enhancing Response Capacity, and Maintaining Essential Services.

By working directly with various health facilities; developing and administering training on key topic areas; and identifying innovative solutions for implementation within existing health systems CGEC has the capability to build surveillance and response capacity for future pandemic preparedness. Size, scope, and duration of the project will be informed by specific project goals and budget. Illustrative activities that can be supported by CGEC and that are focused on surveillance and response capacity are included in the table below.

Integrated Surveillance in Emergency Medicine

• Facility Based Surveillance: Providing support and training to establish facility-based surveillance systems integrated into emergency medicine to enhance early detection and response.

• Forecasting and modelling: Creating advanced infectious disease modeling utilizing artificial intelligence to optimize readiness, resilience, and responsiveness.

• Dashboard: Creation of key commodity and human resource dashboards to improve monitoring and management capacity

• Infection Prevention & Control: Optimization of IPC knowledge, practices, attitudes, and supply chain management

Maintaining Essential Services

• Laboratory Capacity: Training to build laboratory capacity to optimize the detection of public health threats of concern.

• Healthcare Worker Strengthening: Enhancing the knowledge, capacity, and resilience of the health care workforce.

• Health Systems Assessments: Guidance on developing and implementing health system wide assessments for supplies such as oxygen and emergency care.

• Prehospital: Assessments, training, protocol, and management support related to maintaining optimal function during pandemic response.

Enhancing Response Capacity

• Incident Command, Leadership Training: Training through didactics and simulations in incident command and leadership aimed at optimizing performance in the acute phase of response.

• Surge Capacity: Supporting the expansion of surge capacity during a disaster and streamlining policies and procedures for activation.

• Triage and Reverse Triage: Implementing or enhancing triage protocols and practices for daily, disaster, and reverse triage, including advanced electronic triage utilizing machine learning.

• Simulations, Table-Top Exercises: Assistance in developing and implementing disaster drills and simulations at all levels.

• Knowledge Sharing: Supporting capacity, response, and situational awareness through the organization, amplification, and dissemination of key information.

• Rapid Response Training: Training response teams on essential response skills and adaptations to adequately prepare for multiple hazards and to meet other specified objectives.

• Stakeholder Analysis and Engagement: Facilitating effective disaster planning and response via engagement and alignment with the broader health system, civil society, the private sector, and government entities.

• After Action Reviews of Response: Supporting internal development of templates and processes to complete AARs and effectively implement best practices.