Public health crisis response cooperative agreement - the mississippi state department of health (msdh) is a centralized agency responsible for public health and medical emergency preparedness,…

Public health crisis response cooperative agreement - the mississippi state department of health (msdh) is a centralized agency responsible for public health and medical emergency preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery in protecting the health of all mississippians. The msdh provides essential public health services and activities, which touch the lives of every mississippian. The msdh has three public health regions, and each region has identified teams, which include epidemiology and public health preparedness staff, who respond to and recover from public health emergencies. The msdh is the lead agency for disease prevention and control in mississippi. During normal operations, msdh responds to infectious disease outbreaks of varying types and magnitudes. The msdh has the ability to activate its incident command system (ICS), as needed. In the event of an emerging infectious disease outbreak or other emergency, which is declared to be an imminent threat to the public and exceeds the msdh day-to-day capacity, the mississippi emergency management agency (mema) will, at the discretion of the governor, activate the state comprehensive emergency management plan (cemp). Upon activation, mema and msdh will coordinate state-level emergency management activities and engage other stakeholders, including local, state and tribal governments, non-governmental organizations, other states, the federal government, and the private sector. This crisis response grant for rapid funding will not duplicate current funding efforts or activities; however, this funding grant will enhance msdh's ability to provide for any statewide public health response. The response will require substantially more resources than required for normal operations, including staff, equipment, and training to support call centers, investigation, and testing. The msdh will supplement its own resources with additional resources available through volunteers and/or contract personnel, who will fill needed positions in the ICS, serve as subject matter experts, and/or deliver essential public health services.