AGENCY TESTIMONY
Improving emergency preparedness and prioritizing equity
0:14:15
ยท
67 sec
Dr. Morse outlines the health department's efforts to enhance emergency preparedness while prioritizing equity, based on lessons learned from recent health crises. She describes the development of a strategic blueprint to embed equity, trust, agility, and resilience into the agency's structure.
- Commitment to improving emergency preparedness based on COVID-19 and MPOX experiences
- Development of a shared definition of equitable response readiness
- Creation of a blueprint focusing on equity, trust, agility, and resilience
- Plans for implementing the blueprint across the agency to better handle future emergencies
Dr. Michelle Morse
0:14:15
In 2022, during our response to both the COVID nineteen and MPOXX emergencies, the New York City Health Department committed to improving its emergency preparedness.
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And in light of the significant racial inequities we saw in health outcomes during the height of the pandemic, we understood the need to prioritize equity in our strategic planning.
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We started by building a shared definition of equitable response readiness with the input of more than a thousand health department staff.
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The next step was building a blueprint that embeds equity, trust, agility, and resilience into our agency's architecture.
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Over the next few years, we will be implementing that blueprint across our agency.
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When the next emergency hits, this blueprint will ensure that we have what it takes to prioritize disproportionately impacted communities, to collect, analyze, and share public health data in close to real time as possible, and crucially, to operate as part of a larger public health system with partners at all level of government, local, state, national, and international.