Emergency Preparedness Education

Locations: Garden City, Kansas
Salina, Kansas
Outreach Dept: AHEC
Program: Emergency Preparedness Education

To help educate emergency responders KU Area Health Education Center sponsored two emergency preparedness programs in Kansas. One was Oct. 22-25, 2008, in Garden City, Kan., and the other was Oct. 24, 2008, in Salina, Kan. Both events were a success.

During the Garden City event, two classes were offered by Rescue Training Associates (RTA), a team of expert instructors who have onsite involvement and leadership roles in some of the world’s major disasters.

The first class was the Command class. This training class prepared command personnel and other government leaders to direct disaster incident operations.

The second class was the Emergency Operation Center (EOC) class. This was a National Incident Management System (NIMS) compliant training class, aimed at training a variety of institutions and agencies.

The Salina event, 2008 Kansas All Hazards Behavioral Health Symposium was divided into six main tracks: Preparedness, Response and Recovery, Individual Response, Special Populations, Disaster and Emergency Management and Special Trainings. Combined, these training opportunities attracted nearly 200 participants.

Separate programs were also offered for Hospital leadership. One-day seminars were offered in Salina, Topeka and Garden City.

The seminars were designed to instruct busy hospital executives in the key elements of emergency response planning and the Hospital Incident Command System (HICS). The seminars emphasized the importance of institutionalizing emergency response planning and HICS within one’s facility and the criticality of coordinated and integrated planning with other community emergency response agencies. More than 200 participants attended this series of seminars.

Future plans are to repeat these seminars in Hays, Wichita and Pittsburg.