The National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), in collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), have continually worked together to increase the capacity of local health departments (LHDs) to prepare for radiation emergencies and to increase LHD awareness and access to tools, strategies, and other resources related to local public health and radiation preparedness. During 2017-2018, both the CRC eTool and the RadResponder Population Monitoring Module were released to help jurisdictions with population monitoring data management. Population monitoring is the process of identifying, screening, and monitoring people for exposure to radiation or contamination with radioactive materials. To conduct population monitoring, jurisdictions often stand up sites known as community reception centers (CRCs).

Over the past year, NACCHO supported the execution of three functional exercises that captured time-motion and throughput data, in addition to developing and evaluating electronic systems and resources that can be leveraged by health departments to conduct population monitoring data management activities. With the information learned from these functional exercises, NACCHO and CDC created a report detailing how to incorporate electronic data management tools into population monitoring planning and exercises. In addition, NACCHO also released a Community Reception Center (CRC) exercise toolkit supplement which contains guidance and templates for incorporating an assessment of CRC timing/throughput and use of electronic data management systems during CRC exercises.

Report: Incorporating Electronic Resources into Population Monitoring Planning

This report highlights practices and resources to help state and local health departments incorporate electronic population monitoring data management systems into their radiation preparedness planning and exercises. This report details the unique features of both the CDC CRC eTool and the RadResponder Population Monitoring Module. The CRC eTool can be used to collect, analyze, visualize, and transfer individual-level radiation population monitoring data collected from CRCs. The RadResponder Population Monitoring Module allows for the management and visualization of aggregate population monitoring data and CRC facility data from across a jurisdiction or region. The report also includes ways to build these electronic systems into local response plans, exercise considerations, in addition to some useful pointers and stories of best practices from local health departments who successfully implemented the electronic systems into their CRC Exercise.

This report can be found in the NACCHO Toolbox.

Community Reception Center (CRC) Exercise Toolkit – Timing and Technology Supplement

In 2017, the CDC released the Community Reception Center (CRC) Drill Toolkit. This toolkit provided guidance and multiple templates that any county or jurisdiction could adapt in order to conduct an operations-based CRC exercise. The toolkit included guidance on venue selection, scenario narratives, participants’ handbooks, exercise evaluation guides, and additional exercise resources. The NACCHO Community Reception Center Exercise Toolkit – Timing and Technology Supplement provides additional guidance and templates that can be adapted to exercise the full range of CRC operations and includes modified versions of the documents for the use of electronic systems such as the CRC eTool and RadResponder. In addition, the drill toolkit provides additional information for the exercising jurisdiction to capture timing data as a means to estimate hourly CRC throughput.

The Supplemental Toolkit can be found in the NACCHO Toolbox.

Jurisdictions that are planning to capture CRC throughput timing data are encouraged to contact CDC at [email protected] to provide feedback and share examples of modified exercise documentation on the NACCHO Toolbox. For more information on sharing your resources on the NACCHO Toolbox, please contact Alex Harris at [email protected]. If you are planning on conducting a full scale CRC exercise, please contact Lauren Finklea, [email protected].