Health policy 1 Application: Pandemic Flu Planning

Potentially one of the most serious of all public health crises is pandemic flu. In this week’s Application, you will describe plans for responding to such a pandemic.

Begin by browsing through the flu.gov/about_the_flu/h5n1/#, found at , and familiarize yourself with the resources on the site. Then complete the following steps:

Read the “Executive Summary” and Appendix 3: “WHO Global Pandemic Phases and the Stages for Federal Government Response” from the following document on the site: “Interim Pre-Pandemic Planning Guidance: Community Strategy for Pandemic Influenza Mitigation in the U.S.” found at Access the influenza plan for your own state and scan it for information to respond to the exercise below.

For this exercise, assume that cluster(s) of avian influenza appear in your state. These are still localized but show some evidence of human transmission (phase 5).

Drawing on the resources from this Web site and your other Learning Resources this week, address the following questions in a two-page paper:

What epidemic control steps do you recommend? What legal authorities may have to be invoked? What factors will determine or deter the success of your plan? Are you likely to control the outbreak so that it does not proceed to the pandemic phase 6? Would you add anything to the government’s plan, or do you think this is adequate?

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.