Situation:

The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) and the National Emergency Management Association (NEMA) hired Hagerty, in conjunction with TetraTech, to promote mission ready package (MRP) development for public health and medical resources.

Need:

Mission ready packages are pre-determined response assets that are organized, developed, trained, and exercised prior to an emergency or disaster. To understand what types of MRPs were needed, Hagerty conducted background technical research and compared public health and medical resources from ASTHO and NEMA with those from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and NIMS (National Incident Management System). This comparison identified MRP gaps; a survey subsequently helped identify priority areas for medical and public health MRPs.

Solution:

The Hagerty team identified potential MRPs and worked with a client Advisory Group to select ten MRPs for development within these four areas: fatality management, mobile field medical care, shelter and functional needs support services, and medical surge. The team began building out the MRPs and converting them to EMAC-required templates. They reviewed the MRP templates and developed a companion document to go along with each.

After the review process, the team reached out to key stakeholders for comments. Hagerty staff developed and hosted an educational webinar aimed at state-level Public Health Directors and staff. The webinar explained the MRP template development process, provided and overview of project deliverables, clarified what to expect in the way of additional materials and next steps, and answered questions.

Outcome:

After the webinar, Hagerty distributed the materials (10 MRP templates, forms, companion document) to stakeholders for review. The team collected comments about the MRP process and information about whether a state would be able to request or provide the MRPs in the event of an emergency. The feedback was incorporated into a comment matrix as a supplement for future work; the project ended within the allotted timeframe and was well received by both client groups.