Public Health Emergency Preparedness for Government Health Agencies Training Course

Course overview

Government health agencies must make defensible readiness decisions before an outbreak, flood, chemical release, mass-casualty event, or displacement crisis overwhelms routine services. Preparedness plans often exist but lack tested activation thresholds, clear incident roles, interoperable surveillance workflows, resource assumptions, or practical arrangements with hospitals, laboratories, emergency management and community partners. This course helps public health professionals convert policy obligations and risk information into an operational preparedness system that can be activated, coordinated and improved.

Participants work through the public health emergency management cycle using the International Health Regulations (2005), WHO Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management Framework, WHO STAR risk assessment approach, and public health emergency preparedness capability concepts. They learn to assess hazards and vulnerabilities, define preparedness priorities, establish incident management arrangements, design surveillance and risk communication measures, plan essential health-service continuity, and identify logistics, workforce and partner requirements. Particular attention is given to decision logs, triggers, escalation pathways, situation reporting and after-action improvement planning.

The five-day programme is delivered through instructor-led briefings, facilitated planning workshops, scenario injects and peer review of agency-ready documents. Participants build a Public Health Emergency Preparedness Action Plan for a selected hazard relevant to their jurisdiction, including a risk profile, capability gap register, activation matrix, coordination map, communication actions and 90-day implementation roadmap. This tangible deliverable gives both the participant and their manager a structured basis for strengthening local, regional or national preparedness arrangements.

The course is designed for intermediate government health personnel who contribute to emergency preparedness, response coordination, surveillance, planning, health protection or continuity of essential services.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Conduct a multi-hazard public health risk assessment using the WHO STAR approach and documented risk-ranking criteria
• Develop a preparedness capability gap register linked to priority hazards, accountable owners and corrective actions
• Design an incident management activation matrix with triggers, authority levels, roles and escalation pathways
• Map health-sector coordination arrangements across emergency operations centres, laboratories, hospitals and partner agencies
• Create a surveillance and situation-reporting workflow that defines data sources, verification steps and reporting cadence
• Draft a risk communication action plan with audience segmentation, message approval routes and rumour-management procedures
• Build an essential health-services continuity plan covering workforce, medicines, referral pathways and surge capacity
• Produce a 90-day Public Health Emergency Preparedness Action Plan with milestones, indicators and governance reviews

Benefits of attending

Target competencies

Who should attend

• Public Health Emergency Preparedness Managers — who must turn statutory responsibilities into tested agency readiness arrangements
• Health Emergency Operations Centre Staff — who coordinate activation, information flow and multi-agency response functions
• Epidemiologists and Surveillance Officers — who need to connect early warning data with escalation and response decisions
• Government Health Planners — who prepare operational plans, budgets and capability improvement roadmaps
• Health Protection and Communicable Disease Officers — who manage outbreak readiness and interagency control measures
• Hospital and Health-System Liaison Officers — who coordinate service continuity, referral capacity and surge requirements with public authorities

Requirements and prerequisites

Participants should have working experience in a government health agency, public health programme, emergency operations centre, hospital liaison function or related humanitarian health role. Familiarity with basic emergency management terms such as preparedness, response, incident command, surveillance, risk assessment and stakeholder coordination is assumed. Participants should be able to read operational plans, interpret simple tables and use Microsoft Excel or equivalent spreadsheet software for planning exercises. Prior completion of incident command training, epidemiology qualifications, specialist disaster medicine knowledge or experience of a live emergency response is not required. A laptop is strongly recommended for completing the course planning templates.

Training methodology

The course combines focused instructor-led teaching with structured agency-planning workshops. Participants analyse a simulated public health emergency using risk data, surveillance alerts, resource constraints and escalating scenario injects. Small groups develop activation criteria, coordination arrangements, continuity measures and communication actions, then test them through facilitated decision points and peer critique. The instructor demonstrates practical use of WHO and public health preparedness frameworks rather than treating them as reference documents. Each participant closes the programme by refining an application plan for their own agency context and presenting key implementation decisions.

Course outline

Day 1: Risk-Based Public Health Preparedness

• Public health emergency management cycle and government health-agency accountabilities
• International Health Regulations (2005) core-capacity implications for preparedness
• WHO Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management Framework application
• Hazard identification across biological, technological, environmental and societal threats
• Exposure, vulnerability and health-system capacity analysis
• WHO STAR risk scoring and prioritisation logic
• Risk appetite, planning assumptions and residual-risk documentation

Workshop: Participants complete a multi-hazard risk profile and rank three priority threats for a fictional provincial health authority.

Day 2: Preparedness Capabilities and Incident Activation

• Preparedness capability domains and maturity assessment
• Capability gap registers with owners, deadlines and evidence of completion
• Incident management system functions in a public health response
• Emergency operations centre activation levels and decision authority
• Activation triggers, escalation thresholds and notification protocols
• Role cards, delegation arrangements and decision-log design
• Resource typing and surge workforce planning

Workshop: Participants build an activation matrix and capability gap register for an escalating outbreak scenario.

Day 3: Surveillance, Coordination and Information Management

• Integrated disease surveillance and early warning system design
• Signal detection, event verification and epidemiological escalation
• Situation report structures, reporting cycles and information requirements
• Data governance, confidentiality and information-sharing agreements
• Health-sector coordination with laboratories, hospitals and civil protection agencies
• Stakeholder mapping using influence, dependency and operational-role criteria
• Common operating picture inputs and action-tracking procedures

Workshop: Participants create a coordination map and situation-reporting workflow for a cross-district health emergency.

Day 4: Continuity of Services, Logistics and Risk Communication

• Essential health-services continuity priorities during public health emergencies
• Facility surge capacity, referral pathways and patient-flow contingencies
• Medical countermeasure planning for medicines, vaccines, supplies and cold chain
• Emergency procurement, stock visibility and distribution coordination
• Workforce protection, staff welfare and absenteeism planning
• Risk communication principles for uncertainty, trust and protective behaviours
• Community engagement, rumour management and message approval workflows

Workshop: Participants draft a continuity and risk communication action package for a disruption affecting clinics, supply routes and public confidence.

Day 5: Testing, Improvement and Agency Action Planning

• Tabletop exercise design using objectives, injects and decision points
• Testing activation, coordination and communication arrangements
• Performance measures for preparedness capabilities and corrective actions
• After-action review methods and improvement-plan governance
• Preparedness budgeting and prioritisation of low-cost versus high-impact actions
• Ninety-day implementation roadmaps and executive briefing formats
• Peer review against International Health Regulations and agency readiness expectations

Workshop: Participants present and peer-review their Public Health Emergency Preparedness Action Plan, leaving with a prioritised 90-day implementation roadmap.

Tools & standards covered

International Health Regulations (2005), WHO Strategic Toolkit for Assessing Risks (STAR), WHO Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management Framework, CDC Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response Capabilities

A typical training day

Live online deliveries follow the same structure in the East Africa Time zone, with shorter screen blocks and longer breaks.

What the fee includes

How you can take this course

Certification

Participants who complete the full five days receive the Skillset Development Certificate of Completion, stating the course title, course code, dates and delivery format — suitable for professional-development records and employer reimbursement.

Frequently asked questions