Although the University of Illinois did not need to stand up its Emergency Operations Center (EOC) or Incident Command Post (ICP) for the H1N1 pandemic, the school had a plan in place that would have allowed that to happen quickly.
Incident Management
In spring 2009, at the start of the H1N1 influenza pandemic, an H1N1 Committee was formed at the University of Toledo (UT) in Ohio. Committee members quickly recognized two valuable resources in the fight against pandemic influenza: students and community partnerships.
The Ohio State University (OSU) developed an "options-based" pandemic plan that allowed staff to coordinate H1N1 response in a flexible and creative manner.
In December 2008, before the first case of H1N1 pandemic influenza was discovered, Purdue University drafted a plan that outlines how essential and non-essential employees would access its campuses.
The plan, developed by Purdue's Pandemic Preparedness Committee, includes a useful appendix: Essential Function Staff Recommendation. The document provides a system of color-coding employee groups that may enhance public health and emergency preparedness planning.
Memoranda of Understanding have been developed and signed between internal university departments related to the use of facilities for Point of Dispensing (POD) sites. These departments are: Health Center, Environmental Health & Public Safety Department, Physical Facilities Department, Vice President of Student Services, and Recreation Sports Center.
Per the National Incident Management System (NIMS), Department Operations Centers (DOC) are established and activated by individual departments to coordinate and control actions specific to that department during an emergency event. A DOC is a physical facility or location similar to the campus Emergency Operations Center (EOC). However, the purpose of a DOC is to manage and coordinate events specific to that department.
Adapting a logic model that followed alert levels for infectious illness provided needed flexibility for the H1N1 pandemic that emerged in 2009. The process of modifying the model also offered useful lessons about partnerships to University of Michigan (U-M) staff.
From 2006 until the outbreak of H1N1 in spring 2009, the University of Wisconsin Madison (UW-Madison) made pandemic influenza planning a priority for campus organizations and departments. In 2006, initial support for pandemic planning came directly from the Chancellor's office. Given that the University of Wisconsin Madison Police Department (UWPD) oversees emergency management on campus and that the Chief of Police is also an Associate Vice Chancellor, the UWPD became significantly involved in pandemic planning and H1N1 response.
When the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-Madison) established its Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in spring 2009, it used an e-mail platform called MHUB to manage H1N1-related communication across campus. The communications division of the EOC had a difficult job during the H1N1 outbreak, because it was responsible for creating and distributing large amounts of urgent information that was subject to change without much warning.
This simple activity was completed as part of a pandemic influenza response tabletop exercise in March 2009. The activity was designed to illustrate how a pandemic could affect members of the Pandemic Influenza Response Team and to creatively build support for the need to identify three back-up employees for each response position.
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