# 1708
In May of 2007, I along with roughly a dozen others, was asked to contribute to the 2007 Pandemic Leadership Blog hosted by the HHS (Department of Health and Human Services).
That blogsite, with more than 3 dozen essays, and more than 1000 comments, remains available for viewing at the above link.
You'll find blogs by HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt, Admiral John O. Agwunobi, Georges C. Benjamin, MD, Dr. Greg Dworkin, Pierre Omidyar, Rebecca M. Patton, Irwin Redlener, M.D., Albert Ruesga, Sister Patricia A. Talone, Nedra Kline Weinreich, plus a few humble offerings of my own.
Given that the news seems relatively quiet this weekend, I though a repost of one my blogs from that site would be in order, along with an update of what has transpired since last year's Pandemic Leadership Summit.
To Dream The Impossible Meme
Convincing people to react to a threat isn’t always easy. When I was a paramedic, the average person with chest pain would wait several hours before calling an ambulance; sometimes six or ten hours! It wasn’t uncommon to respond to a cardiac arrest, and learn from a relative that the patient had been having chest pain for two days.
During a coronary, time=heart damage. The first 3 hours are critical.
Obviously, if a crushing pain in your chest doesn’t get your attention, an article on a possible pandemic or other disaster that might happen sometime in the future, tucked neatly away on page A-3 of your newspaper isn’t likely to spark much of a reaction.
Denial is a strong, and common, human reaction. We believe if we wait long enough most threats will pass. Or we talk ourselves into believing we are over reacting. Either way, we put ourselves at risk by not responding in a timely fashion.
Alarmed over the number of people who simply waited too long to call an ambulance our EMS director decided to launch a public awareness campaign. He contacted nearly every civic organization and church in the county, and arranged for a paramedic or EMT to address them on the signs and symptoms of a heart attack, and the necessity to seek immediate medical assistance.
We also began pushing CPR classes, and instituted a `CPR day’ at the local high schools. Over the years, we helped teach hundreds of teenagers CPR as an American Heart Association and American Red Cross CPR instructors.
While we never undertook any quantitative analysis of the effects of these presentations, I had several patients proudly tell me they called as soon as they felt chest pains because they had attended one of these events. And one day, my partner and I rolled onto the scene and found a 16-year-old boy doing CPR on his grandfather, quite effectively I might add, and I later learned he had taken one of our classes.
His grandfather made it, by the way, and we made sure the kid got a nice write up in the paper. Our EMS director knew the value of positive community reinforcement.
The point is, public education works. Something as scary as a heart attack, or doing CPR, can be taught to young and old alike.
And so can pandemic preparedness.
Of course, no one called our EMS director and asked, “Hey, why don’t you send your people out and give us a demonstration?” At least, not in the beginning. Most people don’t automatically gravitate towards thoughts of heart attacks or sudden death, unless they are confronted with one.
So we decided we’d have to push the idea, and push it we did. We set up ambulances at the county fair, and in shopping malls, took blood pressures for free, and handed out literature on heart attacks. We hit every school, every year. And we’d even go to condos and trailer parks to get the message out.
In time, it became the thing to do, and many civic organizations would call us back each year. The local newspaper became a great ally, and we got coverage of many of these events. As a result, our county became more `cardiac conscious’, and that saved lives.
We’d established a new meme, a new way of thinking about subjects that were rarely discussed in polite company. Part of it came from our presentation, I think. We geared our presentations to each audience, we often used gentle humor, and no one ever stood up and read a boring speech from note cards. These meetings were lively, entertaining, informal, and informative.
And they worked.
Amazingly, we didn’t really have a budget or even a mandate from anyone higher up. All of these talks were given by off duty personnel who volunteered their time. Pamphlets and handouts were supplied by the County Health Department, American Heart Association, or the Red Cross.
We didn’t ask anyone’s permission, we simply saw a need, and did it.
Today, there are many organizations that could employ these same tactics in order to increase the social awareness of the pandemic threat. National groups, like the Red Cross, and the Medical Reserve Corps, or CERT are naturals. But so are smaller, local groups, like neighborhood watches, EMS departments, civic organizations, and churches.
Without awareness, there will be no preparation. And in order to get to where we want to be, we need the idea of being prepared to filter through the fabric of our society.
This isn’t an impossible meme, but it will require work to make it happen.
The question is, how do we make this happen? Why isn’t it happening now?
Undoubtedly, some of these organizations feel unprepared, or unqualified, to deliver the message. Some may fear sparking an adverse reaction by the public. But most, I believe, are waiting for permission from somebody higher up: a green light.
Up until now, most people speak of pandemic preparations in a hushed tone. As if they are embarrassed to bring the subject up. We talk about terrorism, hurricanes, and earthquakes every day, and yet somehow, the idea of preparing for a pandemic is socially unacceptable. We need to move pandemic prep out of the closet, and into the mainstream.
And to do that, we need to talk about it. Openly, honestly, and often.
Here the government can help. They can encourage discussion at the community level, and enable citizen volunteers to get the message out. We need to make talking about preparedness acceptable, for a pandemic, or for any other threat. The government should consider making preparedness literature available, in quantity, to those spreading the message. They should also find ways to legitimize the messenger.
Working from the grassroots, we can create a brand new meme.
It doesn’t take a PhD., or a six-week training class, or elocution lessons to make someone qualified to deliver the message. Our EMS director threw us out there, without a script, and we did just fine. The pandemic prep message isn’t that complicated. Dr. Greg Dworkin provided excellent examples in his latest blog on how citizens are getting the job done today.
While a Surgeon General’s announcement and television and radio PSA’s would go a long way to help the cause, sometimes what it really takes is a great nation of citizens, talking amongst each other, to start a movement.
There will be resistance. There always is. But we have a large number of well informed, passionate, and dedicated people out there who, like my comrades in uniform so many years ago, would volunteer their time to fight the good fight.
Preparedness apathy isn’t an unbeatable foe.
All we need is a green light.
The purpose of the National Pandemic Leadership Blog and Summit was to bring civic leaders from all over the country together, and to give them the tools they would need to go back to their communities and spread pandemic awareness and encourage preparation.
(They quite obviously were planning on giving us a green light long before I asked for one)
After several months of deliberation and tweaking of the message, Toolkits were released last November, providing guidance, ideas, and yes . . . A GREEN LIGHT . . . to private individuals, civic groups, and other organizations to carry the message forward.
Now anyone can arm themselves with officially sanctioned pandemic awareness materials and work towards community preparation.
The message can be delivered calmly, without hyperbole, and without inciting panic. The flu forums, flu bloggers, and preparedness groups listed below have been proving that possible for several years now.
Along with the government's efforts to engage local communities, we've also seen the rise of grassroots awareness groups, many of which I've highlighted in this blog.
Get Pandemic Ready, The Readymom's, The Prepared Citizen, Students Prep America, and the flu forums such as Flutrackers, The FluWiki, PlanforPandemic, CE Flu Clinic and PFI all provide outreach and copious amounts of information for the public.
We need more, of course. Lots more.
We need people who can translate the message and get it out to non-English speaking people, the way that Zonegrippeaviaire and Francophones des FluTrackers does en Français and Foro de Espanol de FluTrackers does en Español.
We need the help of civic organizations, churches, schools, and local businesses to help spread awareness and help with community preparation. It's a big job, and we need all the help we can get.
Their first stop should be the government's pandemic information portal, www.pandemicflu.gov. After that, there is a wealth of information available from the flu forums, blogs, and preparedness sites.
While it's true we aren't as far along as we need to be, we are farther along than we were a year ago.
Hopefully, we will get enough help before the next pandemic strikes to make a real difference.
