As part of the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) plans to protect the nation against threats to the public health, the organization recently released a Community Planning Framework that addresses major areas that are crucial in any community’s response to abnormally occurring diseases.
The Community Planning Framework is primarily made to strengthen the ability for communities to respond when an area experiences a major disease problem, testing a region’s ability to deal with an outbreak or situation much larger than it typically would. The ability is what the CDC calls “medical surge” and is a huge part of modern disaster response.
The Community Planning Framework is designed to enhance a community’s disaster response ability by emphasizing five major topic areas related to medical surge planning – building planning teams and coalitions models of healthcare delivery, alternate care systems, essential healthcare services, and crisis standards of care.
The Community Planning Framework is less a strict rulebook for emergency disease first responders and more of a loose sets of idea and potential guidelines that highlight essential facts and information that would benefit any first response stakeholder.