Effective Collaboration to Plan and Respond to Communicable Disease Threats

An Insight Event, The Airports Role in Reducing the Transmission of Communicable Diseases, was held on March 6th and 7th, 2018 that included members of the airport community in emergency management, EMS, ARFF personnel, and the public health community representing federal, state and local officials. The objective of the Insight Event was to (1) foster collaboration amongst the two communities, and other stakeholders, to achieve better outcomes, and (2) identify further research. The event highlighted collaboration that has taken place between public health and airport staff in planning and responding to threats or actual events concerning communicable diseases. This drove the point that collaboration, knowing your stakeholder partners in the other communities and their skills and capacity, and planning with each other, is essential to prevent, detect, and respond to threats of communicable diseases. By engaging in planning activities, having correct and actual information and understanding the real risks will increase the likelihood of an appropriate and effective response by first and secondary responders. The Insight Event concluded with a tabletop activity where the participants engaged in a discussion on the different ways in which they would collaboratively respond. This underscored the need for identifying and disseminating best practices. The participants and the planning committee acknowledged that the Insight Event provided a lot of useful information that would be informative for airports of all sizes and therefore, would like to see another workshop event to provide updated information. The COVID-19 pandemic interrupted the ability to conduct the research so this project transisitioned to obtaining the lessons learned from airports from their COVID-19 response. The objective of this research was to identify lessons learned from responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Record URL:
  http://apps.trb.org/cmsfeed/TRBNetProjectDisplay.asp?ProjectID=4623
• Supplemental Notes:
  • The research has been published as ACRP Research Report 253: Airport Lessons Learned from the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Completed
• Contract Numbers:

  Project 03-49

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Airport Cooperative Research Program

  Transportation Research Board
  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC    20001

  Federal Aviation Administration

  800 Independence Avenue, SW
  Washington, DC  United States  20591
• Project Managers:

  Greenberger, Marci

• Performing Organizations:

  Eastern Research Group

  Lexington, MA  United States 
• Principal Investigators:

  Wilhelmi, John

• Start Date: 20190315
• Expected Completion Date: 20210114
• Actual Completion Date: 0

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Airports; Best practices; Communicable diseases; Cooperation; Handbooks; Public health; Stakeholders
• Subject Areas: Aviation; Planning and Forecasting; Safety and Human Factors; Security and Emergencies; Terminals and Facilities;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01677269
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: Transportation Research Board
• Contract Numbers: Project 03-49
• Files: TRB, RIP
• Created Date: Jul 31 2018 8:02PM