Pandemic Flu Citizen Engagement

Pandemic Flu Project Outline

Issue:

Health and emergency agencies across the region are preparing to respond to a potential influenza pandemic. A successful response to a pandemic outbreak in the region depends on citizens playing an active and predictable role in the region’s response. However, citizens may not act as predicted. Instead, they may act on a set of public values and personal concerns, which are not always clear to health officials. How can plans for a pandemic flu response be brought into sync with public values so that public health directions and actions will be understood, supported, and followed by the public?

Outcomes:

Engaging the public will produce a plan that reflects the knowledge of public health experts and the values, concerns and interests of the public. Both are essential for an effective response to the pandemic.

Discussions will focus on three key issues:

  1. How can the community stop or slow the spread of influenza?
  2. How can the community treat those who have been infected with influenza?
  3. How can community institutions, businesses, and the public continue to operate necessary services to minimize collateral impact from the influenza pandemic?

Inside those issues, several questions must be answered:

  1. What values does the public apply to such a threat?
  2. What knowledge does the public require to participate in managing the emergency?
  3. At a time that citizens’ lives are threatened, to whom will they listen and take direction?
  4. What actions should public health and other institutions charged with responding to the situation take?
  5. What actions should citizens take?

Engaging Citizens:

The goals of the engagement phase of this process are threefold:

  1. Convene citizens to determine the values that drive their decisions in a public health emergency.
  2. Convene a conversation among citizens, public health officials, and other institutions about the nature of the community’s response and come to specific recommendations for actions that will be effective and the public will embrace.
  3. Arrive at a communications strategy that will be effective and meet citizens’ needs in the event of a pandemic. This will be in coordination with and an extension of the communications strategy that is being developed by the health departments.

The process:

The following steps constitute the main components of the process from inception to action:

  1. Form a steering committee of public health officials and citizen engagement network representatives. The steering committee will formulate the problem statement and oversee the engagement process.
  2. Citizens will be engaged through the Citizen Engagement Network of organizations around the metro area. These initial meetings will focus on values that the public deems important during a pandemic flu outbreak. It is anticipated that there will be about 18 of these meetings throughout the metro area where there are health department sponsors.
  3. The steering committee will develop a discussion guide based on the values from the first round of engagements. The guide will be the basis for the second round of engagement.
  4. The second citizen engagement will include citizens from around the region who participated in the first round in a dialogue with health officials. This round will move to specific recommendations for elements of a regional pandemic flu plan based on public health standards and the values identified by citizens in the first engagement.
  5. Public health officials take the information from the engagement and modify existing pandemic plans.
  6. One KC Voice takes the final plans and prepares a public report on the plans emphasizing the role of citizens and how the values of citizens have been incorporated into the plans.
  7. A final set of open houses are held by health departments to explain the pandemic flu plan, thank citizens who participated in its crafting, and answer questions.
  8. The public health departments and their media consultants put together and implement the final communication plan based on the results of the engagement.

Decision Makers:

Citizen engagement projects are only successful if they lead to visible action by those in a position to make critical decisions. In this case that is the members of the public health departments.

Budget:

The budget includes training facilitators to help with the early engagements and paying experienced facilitators for the workshops. The budget includes funding for report writing, organizing meetings, facilitating and working with the steering committee.

Conclusion:

An effective response to pandemic flu necessitates public health actions that will be understood, condoned, and followed by the public. The public must be a part of the conversation on how they and public health officials can work together to address a flu pandemic. The recommendations outlined above constitute a strategy for holding that conversation with the public.