Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) - The Conference

[indigo girl]

I just returned from the most amazing conference which included healthcare professionals as well as govt and business professionals, all of us focused on the H1N1 Pandemic, and keeping business including the healthcare business, functioning while dealing with the effects of the pandemic.

I will be sharing information gathered from this event as I go thru my notes, the handouts and what CIDRAP will have available online for attendees. This information was meant for us to take back and share with others.

I highly recommend CIDRAP to all of you IP's out there that want to attend a meaningful future event. CIDRAP overdelivers. They are a class act, and you will be impressed, should you be so lucky enought to have your organization send you to a conference. They do not have them every year, however so I feel very, very fortunate that I was invited to attend this one.

Healthcare was represented by the CDC, ER docs, IP's, corporate heads, HR professionals, docs that worked as the occupational health physicians for many large business organizations, public health and many other HCW.

There were several govt organizations in attendance also such as Dept of Labor, and I think even Homeland Security.

Lots of business organizations were present, some of them quite large with employees in many countries. For a fascinating example of what was shared, we heard from a 3M Company physician who was in Mexico City during the initial outbreak of the novel swine flu virus. What a story, he had to tell of what happened there in those early days of this pandemic when the govt closed down the city businesses. They had to work with the govt to be able to function in order to provide the protective masks particulary the N95 respirators for the healthcare workers in Mexico City. I did not even know that 3M had factories producing these masks in Mexico. Who knew? I have heard from other 3M people at this conference that there is no shortage of these masks, in case anyone is thinking that there are shortages, btw.

I am going to be posting the comments from my fellow flu bloggers, Mike Coston at Avian Flu Diary, and Scott MPherson, the CIO of the Florida House of Representatives when they get around to writing them as both of them were presenters at this conference as representatives of the new media.

Blogging now has been recognized by the govt and organizations such as CIDRAP as being a legitimate method of disseminating important information. Mike Coston was also recently invited to the HHS Pandemic Exercise in D.C. just last month, as well as last year so we know that the govt really gets that this is a way of reaching many people.

The Director of CIDRAP is Dr. Osterholm. Here is a little bio on him:

http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/center/about/staff/articles/osterholm.html

This is a link to the agenda of this important conference. I wish that all of you interested in pandemic information could have attended with me. As you can see, the speaker just after Dr. Osterholm was Julie Gerberding, a former director of the CDC.

http://attendesource.com/profile/web/index.cfm?PKwebID=0x65757d46&varPage=info

[indigo girl]

A Hospital Is No Place for a Sick Person

Does anyone recognize this situation? Unfortunately, most of us do... It's amazing to me that the majority of healthcare facilities actually operate this way.

I meant to ask the HR people why this is so at that conference, but never got around to it.

One of the more surprising things to come out of last week’s CIDRAP summit in Minneapolis was the group polling that indicated that hospitals were among the least likely to make it easy for employees to stay home if they were sick.

Read on: http://afludiary.blogspot.com/2009/09/hospital-is-no-place-for-sick-person.html