Pediatric Disaster Preparedness and Response Newsfeed
PDC In the News
Critical Updates on COVID-19
https://services.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-infections/
Trends in Pediatric Hospitalizations for Coronavirus Disease 2019
Characteristics and Outcomes of US Children and Adolescents With Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C) Compared With Severe Acute COVID-19
Children’s Hospitals Battle COVID-19, Surging Mental Health Needs
https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-01-29/childrens-hospitals-battle-covid-19-surging-mental-health-needs
COVID Recovery Must Prioritize the Nation's Youth
https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/539296-covid-recovery-must-prioritize-helping-the-nations-youth
Children and Disaster: Disaster preparedness to meet children’s needs
https://www.aap.org/en-us/advocacy-and-policy/aap-health-initiatives/Children-and-Disasters/Pages/Strategic-Plan-for-Disaster-Preparedness.aspx
Preparing for the Worst-case Scenario
https://blogs.cdc.gov/publichealthmatters/2017/09/preparing-for-the-worst-case-scenario-2/
Pediatric Disaster Coalition and Pediatric Surge Planning
http://stmaryskids.org/2016/11/23/pediatric-disaster-coalition-and-pediatric-surge-planning/
News of Interest to PDC Members
‘Absolute heroes’: praise for medics treating Manchester victims
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/23/absolute-heroes-praise-for-medics-treating-manchester-victims
Child victims of Mosul battle fill emergency hospital
Blog
Below is an excerpt of a piece written by Celia Quinn, MD, MPH. You can find the full blog HERE.
Preparing for the Worst-case Scenario
Setting the Stage
CDC Career Epidemiology Field Officer assigned to NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
Imagine this: Explosions across New York City target elementary schools. Hundreds of severely injured and traumatized children, teachers, and parents flood hospital emergency departments in the five boroughs. Municipal emergency medical services (EMS) are rushing to respond.
Fortunately this scenario wasn’t really happening – it was part of an exercise conducted on May 25, 2017. The exercise was designed to test the ability of the New York City (NYC) Healthcare System to respond to a massive surge of pediatric trauma patients, exceeding the usual resources of this large and complex healthcare system.
Identifying the Players
As a CDC Career Epidemiology Field Officer assigned to NYC, I worked with the experts in the Pediatric Disaster Coalition and the Fire Department of New York (FDNY). We designed an exercise that reflected the number of injured children who would need to go to the hospital and the type of injuries they might experience if a similar event really happened.
NYC has 62 acute care hospitals that participate in the 911 system. Of these, 16 are level 1 trauma centers designated by the NYC Department of Health (this includes three pediatric level 1 trauma centers and 4 burn centers). A total of 28 hospitals care for pediatric patients and have, during the past seven years with the assistance of the NYC Pediatric Disaster Coalition, developed pediatric-specific components of their overall disaster plans to prepare them to receive pediatric patients from an incident like the one invented for this exercise. All 28 hospitals participated in the exercise.