Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management Training Course

Participants can prioritise threats and build an all-hazards health emergency preparedness plan.

• Construct hazard profiles using likelihood, severity, exposure and coping capacity
• Apply a risk matrix to rank threats and justify priorities
• Map critical health assets, lifelines, referral routes and supply dependencies
• Scenario assumptions, planning horizons and trigger thresholds for action
• Develop all-hazards preparedness objectives, activities, owners and resource requirements
• Test plan coherence against plausible surge and access constraints

Participants can interpret health alerts and establish timely escalation and notification arrangements.

• Indicator-based surveillance signals, thresholds and verification procedures during incidents
• Event-based intelligence from communities, media and partner reports
• Interpret epidemic curves, attack rates, case fatality and positivity
• Design alert escalation pathways from detection to incident notification
• International Health Regulations (2005) notification criteria and national focal points
• Risk communication messages matched to uncertainty, audience concerns and protective actions

Participants can establish health incident coordination structures and manage operational decision cycles.

• Incident Management System functions: command, operations, planning, logistics and finance
• Establish incident objectives, operational periods and written action plans
• Define health emergency coordination cell membership, authority and reporting cadence
• Resource requests, mutual aid and deployment tracking during escalation
• Coordinate clinical, public health, laboratory, ambulance and community services
• Brief senior decision-makers using situation reports, decisions and unresolved constraints

Participants can plan facility and system actions to sustain essential services under pressure.

• WHO Hospital Emergency Response Checklist domains for facility preparedness assessment
• Calculate bed, workforce, oxygen, medicines and diagnostic surge requirements
• Patient flow design: triage, cohorting, referral and discharge pathways
• Business continuity priorities for essential maternal, chronic and emergency care
• Protect staff through infection prevention, security, psychosocial support and rostering
• Restore services using damage assessment, phased reopening and after-action findings

Participants can prioritise population health interventions using rapid needs and service-gap evidence.

• Prioritise rapid health needs assessment questions, sources and sampling methods
• Estimate affected populations, mortality patterns, morbidity and service gaps
• Public health interventions for water safety, sanitation, nutrition and vector control
• Outbreak control measures: case management, contacts, vaccination and environmental actions
• Set minimum data elements for mobile teams and temporary clinics
• Monitor service coverage, timeliness, quality and population feedback

Participants can forecast, allocate and track critical health resources during emergency operations.

• Forecast emergency commodities from caseload assumptions, protocols and consumption rates
• Classify supplies by criticality, shelf life, cold chain and substitutability
• Pre-position stocks using lead times, access risks and storage capacity
• Track orders, receipts, losses and distribution through stock records
• Plan oxygen continuity, generator fuel, water and communications redundancies
• Apply transparent allocation principles when demand exceeds available lifesaving resources

Participants can prepare credible emergency messages and feedback arrangements for affected populations.

• Audience segmentation for responders, patients, community leaders and media
• Create message maps covering known facts, uncertainty and recommended actions
• Rumour tracking, social listening and correction workflows for misinformation
• Community engagement channels for feedback, complaints and service co-design
• Brief spokespeople on empathy, risk comparisons and media questioning
• Communicate protective actions without overstating certainty or assigning blame

Participants can convert response findings into funded preparedness and recovery improvements.

• Link response decisions to recovery priorities, resilience and risk reduction
• Conduct after-action reviews using observations, causes, actions and owners
• Distinguish immediate corrective actions from longer-term capability improvements
• Develop improvement plans with milestones, budgets, indicators and governance
• Measure preparedness progress through drills, audits and readiness indicators
• Integrate disaster risk reduction into health investment and service planning

Participants can prepare a time-bound action plan for strengthening their own emergency readiness.

• Diagnose a local hazard scenario using exposure, vulnerability and capacity evidence
• Select incident objectives, command arrangements and first operational priorities
• Draft a 72-hour health emergency action plan with decision triggers
• Align surveillance, services, logistics and communication tasks against operational periods
• Identify implementation barriers, accountable owners and required management decisions
• Commit to a workplace preparedness improvement action within ninety days