The Center
The Center for Biosecurity and Public Health Preparedness (Center) provides online and face-to-face training programs as well as an academic program and consulting services. The Center's mission is to educate the frontline public health workforce, medical and emergency responders, key leaders, and other professionals to respond to threats such as bioterrorism, emerging infectious diseases, and other emergencies affecting our communities. Check the calendar for current course offerings.
The Center is a center
of The University of Texas School of Public Health (UTSPH). It responds to the unique challenges in Texas through UTSPH's Houston and regional campuses, including sites along the critical US-Mexico border and urban campuses located in San Antonio, El Paso, Dallas, Brownsville, and Austin.
The Center works on a local, state, national, and international level with educational institutions, governmental agencies, relief organizations, and foreign ministries of health to promote our health security program objectives.
- integrated forum to bring critical community responders together
- short-term targeted programs of instruction
- opportunities for more specialized graduate education
- emerging public health and safety issues
- analysis, evaluation, and solutions for homeland security health threats that imperil our citizens and those who must respond to preserve their health
- translation of new ideas into effective solutions that address state-based health security needs
The Center for Biosecurity and Public Health Preparedness (Center) was created in 2000 with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding as part of a network of 25 centers. Centers for Public Health Preparedness (CPHP) train front-line workers in state and local health departments, preparing them to protect American citizens in the event of a public health emergency—inclusive of infections, environmental, occupational, and terrorist threats. The network has already reached thousands through applied training and targeted technical expertise aimed at defending communities in real-world crises. CPHP staff includes world-renowned preparedness experts from accredited schools of public health, allopathic medicine, and veterinary medicine, as well as community colleges across the country. The CPHP network, convened and coordinated by the Association of Schools of Public Health (ASPH), ensures a strong public health system across the nation when and where it is needed.
Texas has a number of factors that increase its potential for terrorism and other public health emergencies. It is one of the largest and most populous states and contains highly concentrated urban areas. Texas has the nation's second busiest seaport, the largest U.S. refining capacity, two nuclear power plants, major international airports, Mission Control for NASA, and the longest strip of the porous US-Mexico border (1,200 miles). These vulnerabilities, as well as the reminders of the events in 2001, indicate the crucial need to train the health care workforce to recognize and report an emergency to proper authorities, to rapidly address the medical and public needs of victims, and to work in an integrated multidisciplinary emergency response.
The Center for Biosecurity and Public Health Preparedness at The University of Texas School of Public Health addresses these apparent and urgent needs of Texas by partnering with numerous educational and clinical institutes throughout Texas, as well as with Mexico and other American states. The Center holds a global perspective on preparedness by collaborating with more distant localities (Hawaii and the U.S. Virgin Islands) while focusing most of its energy and attention to the critical local and county levels. Center Contriubtions to Health and Safety...
- Trained over 15,000 people annually for the past two years to better equip the health care community in Texas and the surrounding region. The disciplines ranged from preparedness in the laboratory and instruction of advanced life support methods to the communication and education of regional bioterrorist coordinators. Follow-up surveys indicated that those who participated in the Center training felt better prepared to respond to hurricanes Katrina and Rita based on what they learned from the Center's instruction.
- Developed and executed a bilingual initiative, titled La Frontera, to concentrate on the various health security needs along the porous US-Mexico border and the foreseeable dangers it presents. More than 1,300 people were trained in disciplines ranging from the most advanced disaster life support to the essential fundamentals for the Mexican health workers (promotoras) working in the rural communities. Furthermore, it hosted two binational conferences to provide an avenue for communication and planning among 300 health officials and health care workers from all of the six Mexican states and the four American states along the U.S.-Mexico border.
- Organized and conducted at the state level a series of webinars for the principal Texas Department of State Health Services officials in all of the different health regions throughout Texas. One simulated a bioterrorist attack and the subsequent public health emergencies that followed. It continued the necessary cultivation of a communication among security officials for an exchange of ideas and deliberations to better prepare for a bioterrorist attack or any public health emergency in Texas.
- Augmented the local planning for disaster preparedness by hosting and creating a Department of Homeland Security Executive Education session that assembled both the County and the City of Houston key officials, as well as critical private sector leaders (Centerpoint Energy, Continental Airlines, Houston METRO, and the Texas Medical Center), who all play integral roles in the event of a public health emergency. They considered the many consequences of a public health emergency, but primarily focused on the proliferation of avian flu and its effects on Texans. The preparedness exercise revealed the gaps in the preparedness plans developed by the two key departments and created a setting to encourage a resolution of these hanging issues between the entities.
- Held an avian flu conference centered on the regional preparedness plan to educate the affected local workers, ranging from epidemiologists and nurses to sanitarians and law enforcement. The conference trained 150 local workers and continued the distribution of knowledge to every level of disaster preparedness. Center Partners...
The Center for Biosecurity and Public Health Preparedness has partnered with other institutions to provide training. These partnering groups include the La Frontera Project (funded by CDC) and other partners (funded by CDC).
Center Links to Other Organizations
Updated: 8/12/2009
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