ABOUT ESPINAL-TABLONAL PROJECT

Community Preparedness

Community Engagement is an essential step to know our people to assess our capacities, talents, needs, risks, and vulnerabilities to create a culture of resilience and preparedness. The most effective way of avoiding injuries and loss of property and human life during a disaster is to prepare for anything. 

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Community preparedness, as the CDC informed us, is the ability of communities to prepare for, withstand, and recover — in both the short and long terms — from public health incidents. By engaging and coordinating with emergency management, healthcare organizations (private and community-based), mental/behavioral health providers, community and faith-based partners, state, local, and territorial, public health’s role in community preparedness is to do the following:  

• Support the development of public health, medical, and mental/behavioral health systems that support recovery  

• Participate in awareness training with community and faith-based partners on how to prevent, respond to, and recover from public health incidents  

• Promote awareness of and access to medical and mental/behavioral health 2 resources that help protect the community’s health and address the functional needs (i.e., communication, medical care, independence, supervision, transportation) of at-risk individuals

• Engage public and private organizations in preparedness activities that represent the functional needs of at-risk individuals as well as the cultural and socio-economic, demographic components of the community  

• Identify those populations that may be at higher risk for adverse health outcomes

• Receive and/or integrate the health needs of populations who have been displaced due to incidents that have occurred in their own or distant communities (e.g., improvised nuclear device or hurricane

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