The pandemic influenza policy model: a planning tool for military public health officials.

The Pandemic Influenza Policy Model (PIPM) is a collaborative computer modeling effort between the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Many helpful computer simulations exist for examining the propagation of pandemic influenza in civilian populations. We believe the mission-oriented nature and structured social composition of military installations may result in pandemic influenza intervention strategies that differ from those recommended for civilian populations. Intervention strategies may differ between military bases because of differences in mission, location, or composition of the population at risk. The PIPM is a web-accessible, user-configurable, installation-specific disease model allowing military planners to evaluate various intervention strategies. Innovations in the PIPM include expanding on the mathematics of prior stochastic models, using military-specific social network epidemiology, utilization of DoD personnel databases to more accurately characterize the population at risk, and the incorporation of possible interventions, e.g., pneumococcal vaccine, not examined in previous models.

Enhancing Disease Surveillance Event Communication Among Jurisdictions.

Automated disease surveillance systems are becoming widely used by the public health community. However, communication among non-collocated and widely dispersed users still needs improvement. A web-based software tool for enhancing user communications was completely integrated into an existing automated disease surveillance system and was tested during two simulated exercises and operational use involving multiple jurisdictions. Evaluation of this tool was conducted by user meetings, anonymous surveys, and web logs. Public health officials found this tool to be useful, and the tool has been modified further to incorporate features suggested by user responses. Features of the automated disease surveillance system, such as alerts and time series plots, can be specifically referenced by user comments. The user may also indicate the alert response being considered by adding a color indicator to their comment. The web-based event communication tool described in this article provides a common ground for collaboration and communication among public health officials at different locations.