Last year, the Celia Scott Weatherhead School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine at Tulane University was one of six leading universities selected to develop a new regional center for health security and response readiness, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Region 6 Center for Health Security and Response Readiness will address critical gaps in crisis preparedness in public health systems across Louisiana, Arkansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and 68 federally recognized tribal nations. 

“The vision for the center is to create a robust, collaborative network that enhances the ability of public health systems to prevent, detect, and respond to emergencies on state, local, and tribal levels,” said Principal Investigator Stephen Murphy, director of the Tulane Disaster Management Master of Public Health Program. “This is an opportunity to better support our public health systems and workforce, build collaborative new partnerships, increase integration of evidence-based strategies into our emergency protocols, and use the decades of practice-based experience at Tulane and beyond to improve this region’s readiness for the emergencies of tomorrow.”

“The vision for the center is to create a robust, collaborative network that enhances the ability of public health systems to prevent, detect, and respond to emergencies on state, local and tribal levels,” said Murphy.

The center will work to improve coordination between multi-sector partners by examining previous disasters and identifying which institutional relationships should be bolstered prior to the next crisis. The center will also serve as an information and research hub that will collect and analyze local level data on past emergency responses to offer tailored crisis readiness guidance rooted in evidence and region-wide expertise.

Some of the types of questions the center will consider include:

• What triggers would signal a hospital to source potable water from elsewhere?
• Which partnerships can improve regional storm shelter capacity?
• What are the medical needs at different shelters?
• How do we connect various data sources to improve awareness between partners? 

It’s important to remember that even in the Gulf Coast, disasters are not limited to hurricanes. Pandemics, major power outages, interruptions to the water supply, widespread industrial accidents, and terrorist threats are all included under the umbrella of health security, along with natural events like earthquakes, fires, and floods.