Profs. Barbera and Shaw awarded a $218,400 sub-grant

Profs. Joseph Barbera and Gregory Shaw have been awarded a $218,400 sub-grant from the District of Columbia Department of Health and the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments for applied research to develop and conduct a public health risk assessment for the CDC-defined Washington DC Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA). The research, to be performed through the EMSE Institute for Crisis, Disaster and Risk Management (ICDRM), will identify the major medical and public health hazards that threaten the region and then perform a disciplined vulnerability analysis of the hazard consequences across the jurisdictions. This complex MSA includes Washington DC, counties in northern and northwestern Virginia, many counties in Maryland and extending west to include Jefferson County, West Virginia. The goal of this public health risk assessment and vulnerability analysis is to establish an information basis for risk-informed decision-making by public health authorities for hazard mitigation, emergency preparedness, major incident response and effective recovery planning. The CDC program that is funding this effort is interested in the methodological approach to this type of risk assessment in addition to the specific findings from the project. ICDRM was solicited for a proposal based upon its reputation for multidisciplinary research and its extensive history of risk research.