Local Health Department Healthcare Coalition
ZANESVILLE, Ohio – Natural Disasters pose a risk that can strike at any moment and seriously affect public health.
Zanesville-Muskingum County Health Department Health Educator Carleigh West explains how the Healthcare Coalition has been established to prepare strategies between area healthcare providers to better address gaps in public service.
“We meet quarterly,” West said. “And at these meetings, it’s mainly for networking and making sure that we have our contacts up to date. There is a lot of people involved so it’s very easy for there to be turnover and changing contacts. Obviously, in an emergency we don’t need to be figuring out who works where and who can do what. So meeting throughout the year keeps us in contact with the people that we need to be. And then also we do emergency response planning and review, making sure that all of our response plans align together, that we’re not overusing resources or if we’re duplicating efforts, we can try to streamline that to make our response quicker.”
The Healthcare Coalition includes Perry and Morgan Counties in monthly communication drills along with periodic training opportunities and exercises to better prepare for a wide range of disasters.
“So at a minimum, the members that we have are representatives from the hospital, from EMS, Emergency Management Agencies and then the public health departments. Aside from that, anybody can join that are physicians, it could be law enforcement, fire departments, home health agencies, long-term care. But it really doesn’t matter who wants to join, anybody can add value and we can give them value to help them with emergency response planning. So even like schools. That’s starting to become a major partner that we haven’t seen in the past,” West said.
The Healthcare Coalition operates from funds that are available to assist in response planning and preparation. Anyone from Muskingum, Perry or Morgan Counties interested in joining the Healthcare Coalition can learn more by contacting West at the Muskingum County Health Department, (740) 454-9741 ext.238.
