One of the least-known and incredibly important U.S. Government groups of available information for minimizing healthcare facility challenges is the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), an arm of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. They have developed a healthcare emergency preparedness information gateway – the Technical Resources, Assistance Center, and Information Exchange (TRACIE) – that was created to meet the information and technical assistance needs of regional ASPR staff, healthcare coalitions, healthcare entities, healthcare providers, emergency managers, public health practitioners, and others working in disaster medicine, healthcare system preparedness, and public health emergency preparedness. TRACIE is organized into three sections: technical resources, assistance center, and an information exchange and provides hundreds of documents, tip sheets, templates, webinars, videos, tutorials, and other resources with valuable information and real-life experiences.

 

Technical Resources

Broken into two components, the Technical Resources section serves as a resource library and topics collection.  The Resource Library includes resources from numerous databases from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and other government agencies. It contains up-to-date disaster medical, healthcare system preparedness, and public health emergency preparedness materials. Collections include the most robust and most useful peer-reviewed and other public and privately developed materials (e.g., fact sheets, technical briefs, articles, toolkits, webinars, and plans) helpful to stakeholders in improving healthcare system preparedness and resilience. Dozens of topics are included in the collection, from operational topics like communications and cyber security to emergency preparedness topics like decontamination and bioterrorism.

 

Assistance Center

The Assistance Center is a portal for obtaining access to Technical Assistance Specialists for one-on-one support. There is a special page dedicated to resources in the event of a hospital lockdown.

 

Information Exchange

The Information Exchange is peer-to-peer resource for nearly real-time discussion of healthcare emergency topics.

 

Those interested in obtaining more information from ASPR TRACIE’s almost 10-year publication history can easily find it online. You’ll find The Exchange, a detailed newsletter with a specific focus each issue; The Express, a monthly email covering a range of topics; Behind the Response: Experiences from the Field, with almost 100 groups of available sources as references – including many detailed groups of topics; and dozens of other resources.

Share this information with your healthcare system’s personnel. You will be happy you did, and so will they.