# 4783
The last time I highlighted CIDRAP’s Promising Practices Website was last April, and since that time they’ve added many new locally created preparedness initiatives and have incorporated pandemic response activities from institutions of higher learning.
If you are interested in starting a community preparedness or response program - or one for a college or university - rather than re-inventing the wheel, a visit to this website could save you and your organization a lot of time, money, and aggravation.
Here is the press release on these latest additions.
Universities share lessons learned in H1N1 response on Promising Practices site
Aug. 3, 2010
CIDRAP's Promising Practices: Pandemic Influenza Tools, your online resource for useful preparedness and response tools, has expanded to include H1N1 pandemic response activities from Higher Education institutions.
At www.CIDRAPpractices.org, you will find tools, tips and practices in nine categories, from incident management to teaching policies and human resources to residence halls. You'll find more than 30 practices ranging from innovative solutions to housing for ill students to high-tech options for scheduling mass vaccination clinics. More practices are being added all the time.
CIDRAP is launching the newest category of Promising Practices with financial support from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) and in collaboration with the universities of the Big 10+2.
"Colleges and universities were very important, but largely unsung partners in responding to the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic," said Jill DeBoer, MPH, Associate Director of CIDRAP at the University of Minnesota, and Director of the Academic Health Center Office of Emergency Response (AHC-OER), who oversees the project. "What we have learned from them can strengthen public health and university response for many public health emergencies. By sharing such promising work, CIDRAP hopes to save time and resources for those charged with safeguarding the public's health."
Expansion of the Promising Practices site is one element of a three-part project focused on what universities learned during the pandemic. An online conference for Big 10+2 university partners took place on May 18, and a report highlighting universities' lessons learned in H1N1 response will be published this fall.
Please visit the site to see CIDRAP's collection of more than 330 preparedness and response practices. To share your own agency or university's Promising Practices in response, click on "submit a practice". Colleges and universities, as well as public health agencies and stakeholders, are invited to submit their Promising Practices in pandemic response.
Contact: Jill DeBoer, MPH
Associate Director of CIDRAP
Director of Academic Health Center Office of Emergency Response
612.626.6770
