The public information officer (PIO) is a vital part of the
incident command team, charged with delivering accurate
information to the right people at the right time. This session
will review the role of the PIO and present attendees with
strategies for utilizing social media for emergency
communications.
Presenter:
Valerie Lakey, Executive Director,
Mayers Memorial Hospital District
Across the United States, 211 offers no-cost confidential
services to anyone in need. This includes crisis and emergency
services such as food, utilities, housing, health, human
trafficking, veterans, and jobs.
This “Crisis and Emergency Risk Communication Tool Kit” provides
detailed resource materials to assist in effectively managing and
communicating during an emergency or crisis. The Tool Kit
is specifically designed to support writing and implementing a
crisis communication plan. A crisis communication plan
clearly defines your goals, objectives and actions. It
provides specific guidelines and instructions for communicating
during emergencies.
The FCC designated 2-1-1 to provide public access to
information about and referral to health and human services.
2-1-1 achieves its greatest potential when it brings together the
existing comprehensive information and referral services in
communities and expands those services into previously unserved
areas.
During community catastrophies, regular and cell phone service
may be disrupted. Without availability of these
services, alternate forms of communication must be relied
upon.
It is critical to develop communication strategies which
include redundant forms of communication in advance of these
events.
Redundant communications can include:
Basic telephone systems
In-building wireless phone systems
Overhead announcement and paging systems
Nurse call system
Voice over Internet Protocol systems
Cell phones
Beepers and pocket pagers
Enterprise systems
BlackBerries and similar devices
Text messaging
Text-to-voice translation
Communication systems for the deaf and hearing impaired
Telephonic translation lines and services
Access control systems
Fax machines
Hospital television network systems
E-mail
Mass notification systems
Hospital electronic bulletin boards
Intranet message posting
Bed-tracking and facility status reporting systems
Electronic health record systems
Enterprise systems for networked hospitals
Resource and grant-asset tracking systems
Evacuee and disaster patient tracking systems
Emergency medical services communication systems
Emergency desktop and mobile handheld programmed radios
Communication with emergency operations centers
Public health monitoring and notification systems (syndromic
surveillance systems, threat notification systems, outbreak
management systems)
Satellite radio and communication systems
Ham radio systems
Human runners (the low-tech communication system if all else
fails)
This guide is for the people who write the words, who take the
pictures, and who tell the stories about the events in our
world—both ordinary and extraordinary.
This guide is intended to provide information about how the
public health system is preparing for and will respond to
previously unthinkable events, such as September 11. More
specifically, the guide’s intent is to offer the best possible
information about the worst-case scenarios.
This information was compiled to prepare our community members to
deal with emergencies. The information is easy to read,
translated into different languages and is available free without
copyright restrictions.