Integrating public health and medical intelligence gathering into homeland security fusion centres.

Homeland security fusion centres serve to gather, analyse and share threat-related information among all levels of governments and law enforcement agencies. In order to function effectively, fusion centres must employ people with the necessary competencies to understand the nature of the threat facing a community, discriminate between important information and irrelevant or merely interesting facts and apply domain knowledge to interpret the results to obviate or reduce the existing danger. Public health and medical sector personnel routinely gather, analyse and relay health-related inform-ation, including health security risks, associated with the detection of suspicious biological or chemical agents within a community to law enforcement agencies. This paper provides a rationale for the integration of public health and medical personnel in fusion centres and describes their role in assisting law enforcement agencies, public health organisations and the medical sector to respond to natural or intentional threats against local communities, states or the nation as a whole.

Summary of the current operational epidemiological modelling landscape.

Through the National Center for Integrated Civilian-Military Domestic Disaster Medical Response, the Yale New Haven Center for Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Response and US Northern Command have initiated a study to determine the requirements of a national operational epidemiological modelling process. During a public health emergency, decision makers often require a variety of epidemiological information, including prospective forecasts that can be made available in the form of models. Currently, there is no formal process across US Government agencies and departments to synchronise epidemiological models with response organisations. The research presented here summarises the landscape of the modelling and consequence management communities for the purpose of informing the development of a proposed national operational epidemiological modelling process.