BACKGROUND
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.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of this research was to identify lessons learned from responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.
