For Release: IMMEDIATE
Date: August 3, 2006

Mississippi Releases Katrina Report Conducted by North Carolina

RALEIGH – The Mississippi Department of Health (MDH) today announced the findings of an after action review of the state’s response to Hurricane Katrina that was conducted by several North Carolina agencies in February and March. Titled “Mississippi After Action Review, Emergency Support Function 8” the review was coordinated by the NC Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Emergency Medical Services with support provided by the NC Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, the NC Division of Emergency Management and the UNC School of Public Health.

“ The Mississippi Department of Health requested this after-action review to help us gain an idea of our strengths and shortfalls during the response,” Jim Craig, director of Health Protection at MDH and the agency’s incident commander during Hurricane Katrina, said. “While we are aware of our accomplishments, we also know there is room for improvement. This review will help us develop a performance improvement plan and a more effective response in the future.”

The ability to conduct the review was made possible through the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC), according to NC State Health Director Leah Devlin. The EMAC is a mutual aid agreement and partnership between the member states to assist each other in times of hurricanes, earthquakes, wildfires, terrorist attacks and other disasters. Mississippi submitted its request to the compact and they called upon North Carolina because of its proven ability to conduct such reviews.

“ The information in this report will not only help Mississippi’s preparedness efforts, it will help those of North Carolina and the rest of the country,” Dr. Devlin said. “We are proud of the fact that our capabilities are so well developed and highly regarded that we are asked to assist others in this way, and we are fortunate that the EMAC system provides a source of funding that allows us to share them.

The Mississippi Department of Health sought to have North Carolina conduct the After Action Review through EMAC in large part because of a previously shared Katrina experience, according to OEMS Bioterrorism Coordinator Holli Hoffman. Mississippi’s staff drew from the relationships they had developed with North Carolina’s OEMS and public health staff when one of the state’s mobile hospitals was deployed to Waveland after the hurricane. Ms. Hoffman was assigned lead of the project and assembled a planning team including staff from the state’s Division of Public Health (DPH), regional OEMS staff and a public health program evaluator from the UNC School of Public Health (UNC-SPH). During the next four weeks a plan was created to collect data measuring the effectiveness of Mississippi’s response and to identify strengths and weaknesses in the MDH response systems.

“The review employed three methods of collecting information,” Ms. Hoffman said, “an on-line survey for emergency responders across the state, face to face interviews with key responders, and citizen interviews to assess the level of service provided to affected communities. The questions we asked were based on the ‘Targeted Capabilities List’ created by FEMA. This list specifies the capabilities each emergency support function should possess to carry out an effective emergency response and is used throughout the nation.”

To complete the more than 100 face to face interviews with Mississippi’s key responders and more than 400 household interviews, North Carolina deployed a team of 14 health professionals from OEMS, state and local public health offices and the UNC School of Public Health the week of February 13. Teams made up of 20 volunteers from Mississippi were trained on location and also conducted interviews. An additional 200 community assessment interviews were completed by the NC Center for Public Health Preparedness in March.

After the data were collected OEMS, NC DPH and the NC Institute for Public Health summarized the findings and created the report that was released by Mississippi today.

To view the full after-action report visit the Mississippi Department of Health’s website at www.msdh.state.ms.us/msdhsite/_static/44,0,122,63.html.

For more background on the deployment and the study go to: www.epi.state.nc.us/epi/pdf/en2006-1.pdf (page 4) and www.sph.unc.edu/nciph/news/impact/May06.htm#story3.

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