Next Steps
In a community, this systematic process can be used by all emergency planners to work together to define, locate and reach at-risk populations. It is hoped that everyone exploring the process will work to connect with one another and to coordinate their activities. Now that the process is complete, you will need to continue strengthening the relationships that you have developed.
Exercise your network with drills and preparedness exercises. Include your COIN members in preparedness exercises and drills to test their capability to disseminate information to the at-risk populations they represent. Using the information in your database, plan and carry out a simple drill to test your network using an e-mail message. Before the test, alert COIN members and give instructions for their response.
At the appointed time and day, send an e-mail test to the network members. Consider including information on individual emergency preparedness in the email to COIN members to promote public education events or activities. You might even consider using your network to disseminate non-emergency public health messages periodically. As you get more experience and a better understanding of your network membership, it will become easier to separate groups for different message dissemination purposes.
When exercising the capacity of the network for information dissemination, look for gaps in message delivery. Questions that you and your COIN members should ask include:
- What elements worked as planned?
- Were community leaders of at-risk populations reached effectively?
- Was anyone left out?
- Who needs to be added to the COIN?
- What reactions and factors did we fail to anticipate?
- Where can we improve the plan?
These exercises should generate after-action reports that will outline the gaps in your emergency communications and preparedness plans. Be sure to revise and update your preparedness plans based upon the after-action report findings.
Continue to include your network in preparedness planning and exercises for at-risk populations and regularly repeat the cycle to:
- Exercise the capacity of your network
- Evaluate the effectiveness of your network
- Identify gaps in information dissemination and planning for the needs of at-risk populations
- Identify ways to address gaps
- Identify agencies and organizations that will need to coordinate activities to address each gap
- Determine a reasonable timeframe to address each gap
- Assign responsibility to an individual in each agency or organization tasked to address each gap
- Update respective preparedness plans to reflect changes that are implemented
Expand your scope. Once you have been able to successfully define, locate, and reach members of your initial at-risk population groups, you can expand your initiative to include more groups using the same steps you followed in each phase of this process.
Other ways to expand your scope in this work include:
- Host meetings for your COIN members to keep them involved and connected with one another.
- Provide training sessions to train COIN members on their responsibilities during an emergency. This is also an opportunity to learn more about your at-risk community through your partners. For example, health department and first responders can learn more about the community and neighborhood, culture, priorities, and roles and responsibilities.
- Develop training materials for your COIN members to help them keep up to date.
- On a limited basis, you might consider enlisting the voluntary participation of COIN members to help disseminate public health prevention messages. Your COIN will be exercising its capacity to reach its members and helping you disseminate public health information. This can only make your COIN stronger and more effective when it is needed to reach at-risk populations in an emergency and to possibly save lives.
- Include more COIN members in preparedness planning activities for the at-risk populations they represent.
We encourage you to make the connections to build a robust and functional COIN that will serve your community well during an emergency.
