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Strategies for Effective Improvements to the BioWatch System Proceedings of a Workshop (2018) / Chapter Skim
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Appendix E: Invited Paper: BioWatch Program Overview: A Local Public Health Perspective for Enhancing Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response
Pages 113-125

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From page 113...
... Title: Director, Disease Control and Environmental Health (retired) Affiliation: City of Milwaukee Health Department 113
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From page 114...
... Science and Technology Directorate designed, initiated, and launched the BioWatch program in April of 2003 for purposes of enhancing outdoor aerosolized detection of select bioagents within several predesignated metropolitan areas throughout the country. The primary mission of the program was to mitigate the severity of public health impact associated with widespread airborne exposure to select bioagents in the context of both potential widespread human exposure and rapid deployment of medical countermeasures for population treatment and prophylaxis.
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From page 115...
... are integral to robust and meaningful response planning that engages appropriate community stakeholders, including key first responders such as emergency medical services (EMS) , local law enforcement, fire department HazMat teams, hospitals, environmental agencies, and emergency management offices.
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From page 116...
... Filters from individual Biowatch PSUs located within a jurisdiction network are collected and transported or arranged for secure delivery to a BioWatch laboratory by trained environmental field staff observing appropriate chain-ofcustody procedures. BioWatch laboratories typically perform and report air monitoring unit filter analysis within 12 to 18 hours postfield PSU filter collection to DHS, CDC, and LHDs.
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From page 117...
... BIOWATCH NATIONAL CONFERENCE CALL AND LOCAL TELECONFERENCES An important protocol within BioWatch program management integral to a strategic, coordinated and successful response to a declared BAR for single or multiple air-monitoring collectors within a jurisdiction are BioWatch local and national teleconference calls. Each of these are held under a strictly defined timeframe following the declaration of a BAR for purposes of reviewing and assessing field, laboratory, epidemiologic, and environmental data as well as law enforcement intelligence that would suggest or corroborate a potential bioterrorism threat or risk.
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From page 118...
... Phase I and Phase II environmental sampling is also used to inform and support event reconstruction modeling by National Laboratories, which is necessary to delineate the scope and breadth of bioagent release, geographic impact, as well as acute and chronic health risk to potentially exposed populations. BIOWATCH COMMUNICATIONS STRATEGY, STAKEHOLDER WORKGROUPS, AND WEB PORTAL The BioWatch program strongly emphasizes and routinely promotes information sharing between all partners and stakeholder groups both as part of preparedness planning and during response related activities.
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From page 119...
... BIOWATCH VALUE PROPOSITION FOR PUBLIC HEALTH EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS (PHEP) In its current form and level of operational efficiency, the BioWatch system provides a platform for development of airborne biological early warning and detection previously absent from the local public health department portfolio.
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From page 120...
... The BioWatch program as implemented at the local level represents environmental biosurveillance that engages an array of public health expertise that convenes human and animal epidemiology, laboratory analytical methodologies, and environmental health practice. This comprehensive approach, further strengthened by partnerships with EMS, private health care, law enforcement, and emergency management agencies along with interjurisdictional considerations, results in BioWatch inhabiting a unique niche within the traditional PHEP paradigm.
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From page 121...
... This will inherently require coalescence of clinical, environmental, and epidemiologic electronic data collection, analysis, and dissemination across the public and private health care enterprise within a community and vertically between government and medical-oriented business sectors. BIOWATCH: FUTURE CONSIDERATIONS ON THE WAY FORWARD State and local public health agencies, along with health care providers, are on the front line for preventing and controlling communicable disease transmission within communities and encompassing regions.
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From page 122...
... Providing local public health agencies with data that are ambiguous, uncertain, or unable to be validated creates inefficiencies in response and potentially undermines public health risk messaging credibility. Although the current BioWatch system as launched in 2003 through the DHS OHA is imperfect with regard to the above criteria, it does provide a context if not a foundation for continuing state and local public health engagement regarding environmental bioagent detection.
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From page 123...
... This enhances public health deci sion making as to population risk associated with adverse exposure pathways and improves confidence in deploying necessary prevention and intervention measures to mitigate deleterious outcomes.  Future technology must be vetted and deployed with consensus and at a timeline agreeable to state and local public health agencies in coordina tion with other local stakeholders.
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From page 124...
... Next-generation BioWatch system technologies must therefore inherently contain evaluation metrics that are acceptable and provide "meaningful use" to state and local public health agencies that are responsible for consequence management planning and response activation. Therefore, federal agencies like DHS OHA should develop strong relationships and communication pathways with local public health agencies to ensure close alignment between environmental biosurveillance initiatives and current local public health emergency preparedness models.
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From page 125...
... 2017. Securing the BioWatch web portal.
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Key Terms

  • local public
  • health agencies
  • environmental sampling
  • law enforcement
  • homeland security

  • local health
  • health departments
  • biowatch laboratory
  • bioagent release
  • select bioagents

  • biowatch lrn
  • current biowatch
  • biowatch portal
  • health emergency
  • health risk

  • program mission
  • emergency management
  • emergency medical
  • electronic data
  • web portal

  • bar declaration
  • conference call
  • national biowatch
  • biowatch national
  • biowatch jurisdictional

  • biowatch laboratories
  • biowatch web
  • public risk
  • public information
  • health engagement


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