Public health crisis response cooperative agreement - idaho department of health and welfare's (dhws) mission is to promote and protect the health and safety of idahoans

Under that mission, DHW supports a decentralized local public health system composed of seven (7) public health districts (phds) spanning the state's 44 counties. These eight agencies employ different but complementary roles in the planning, funding, delivery, and evaluation of public health services in idaho. Health related responsibilities within DHW are assigned to the nationally accredited division of public health (DPH). The idaho office of emergency management designated DHW as the coordinating agency to lead public health and medical services activities under emergency support function 8 (ESF-8). In the event of an emerging infectious disease outbreak, DHW's public health preparedness and response section (phpr) will collaborate with public health, emergency medical services, (EMS), and healthcare system partners to effectively and efficiently respond to and support a public health emergency. Emergency response plans are in place and address how to rapidly mobilize, surge, and respond effectively to reduce morbidity and mortality. Phpr and the phds have agreements for use of facilities for receiving, staging, storing ( RSS), district distribution centers (ddcs), and points of dispensing (POD) locations including primary and back-up sites. DHW and the phds also have memoranums of understanding (mous) for transportation, pharmacy, security, cold storage, and regional resources, etc. DHW and the phds will continue to secure additional mous and update existing mous as needed. The public health crisis response funding will support and enhance state and local public health infrastructure that is critical to response efforts across six domains: incident management, jurisdictional recovery, biosurveillance, countermeasures and mitigation, and surge management. The grant application has been developed to show activities DHW will implement in order to ensure rapid mobilization and response to an emergency infectious disease with the understanding that crisis response funding may be released for a number of response scenarios creating a public health emergency of such magnitude and complexity that IT exceeds available resources within the state of idaho. The crisis response funds will ensure idaho is able to accomplish timely: - activation and management of the DHW emergency operations center (DHW EOC); - identification and investigation of an index case or an incident that will exceed resources quickly - implementation of crisis intervention and control measures; - coordination and support of public health and healthcare system response activities; and - risk communication messaging disseminated to the general public to empower them to make informed decisions about their health.