The Preparedness Summit is the first and longest running national conference on public health preparedness. Since its beginning in 2006, the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) has taken a leadership role in convening a wide array of partners to participate in the Summit; presenting new research findings, sharing tools and resources, and providing a variety of opportunities for attendees to learn how to implement model practices that enhance the nation’s capabilities to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters and other emergencies.
As crisis has become commonplace, this need for simultaneous and multipronged response has stretched our infrastructure and our personal capacity. We have pushed our preparedness plans and deployment capabilities as far as they will go, and now we must strategize new and transform existing approaches that better equip us for future events. That’s why this year’s theme, When Crisis is Commonplace: Transforming Your Community’s Public Health Preparedness Practices, will focus on how we must adapt our preparedness and response infrastructure to this reality and will highlight tools, resources, and policies that enable us to meet the many challenges we as public health professionals continue to face every day.