Current Initiatives
Ham Radio | SCHEART
For hospitals and healthcare agencies, loss of communications can cost human lives in a heartbeat unless alternative systems are right at hand.
The USC-CPHP and its partner organizations have built a statewide redundant communications system for hospitals and healthcare agencies called SCHEART (South Carolina Healthcare Emergency Amateur Radio Team) that increases our state’s readiness for everyday emergencies and major disasters by providing hospitals and healthcare facilities with redundant communications for drills, exercises and real-life emergencies. The USC-CPHP works closely with leaders of the Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES), Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Services (RACES), and the SC Hospital Association to train and license new operators across the state. The Center advocates for all four aspects of the ham radio initiative:
- continued training and licensing of new operators
- development of Radio Response Teams committed to covering their local hospitals when needed
- assessments of hospitals’ needs for ham radio equipment and help with resources to purchase it, and
- participation in drills, exercises and real-life events.
The SCHEART tremendous success has come from constant collaboration, great leadership and ongoing, energetic support for all four of these initiatives.
For more information, please go to the HAM Radio | SCHEART section of our website.
Team-Based Training Institute (TBTI)
Team-based training strategies are the basis of the Center’s unique change strategy. The Center brings together multidisciplinary teams and helps them plan, conduct, and evaluate major projects that significantly enhance preparedness in their communities. Team-Based Training Institute sessions are tailored to the concerns, schedules, and needs of the individual teams, and are set up for the benefit and convenience of individual teams. As with all its services, the Center provides critical networking and collaboration opportunities, performs precise and comprehensive evaluation of projects based on its logic model, and shares/disseminates the products developed to reach target audiences.
For more information, please go to the USC-CPHP Team-Based Training Institute page.
Graduate Student Epi (Epidemiology) Investigation Teams
In order to provide graduate students in the Arnold School of Public Health with hands-on training and field experience in disease investigation, and to provide the SC Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) with surge capacity in emergencies, the USC-CPHP is collaborating with Arnold School and DHEC epidemiologists to develop and support Epi Investigation Teams. Teams are guided by professors in the Arnold School’s Epidemiology/Biostatistics department, DHEC epidemiologists, and Center staff. The project will train students and build their skills toward entry into the public health workforce. The Epi Teams provide DHEC employees and graduate students the opportunity to network and become acquainted before they have to face emergency situations together.
This effort is South Carolina’s first student-based Disaster Response Team. While still in its initial year of operation, it is open to students from the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. One of the long-term goals of the program, however, is to open it to all Arnold School students as well as students from other areas of Health Sciences.
Ethics and Public Health in an Age of Terrorism
Ethics and Public Health in an Age of Terrorism is a carefully-crafted curriculum that explores the role of public health in addressing the ethical, emotional and legal dilemmas confronting those who plan for and respond to all hazards. The course was created in 2004 by a multi-disciplinary Advisory Committee of public health academics and professionals. It was designed and taught by distinguished faculty in public health, medicine and medical ethics, veterinary medicine, and economics. Their life-long scholarship and leadership enabled students to explore, from a multi-disciplinary perspective, the role of public health in addressing the many ethical, emotional and legal dilemmas posed by planning for and responding to terrorist attacks, emerging infectious diseases, and natural disasters. The course curriculum was written by philosopher and ethicist Howard B. Radest, PhD, and published in 2006.
Now available in a totally new, web-based, interactive course for all audiences, the curriculum is a guide for public health students, the workforce, and concerned citizens who want to find their way ethically when decisions must be made rapidly, under anxiety-filled and emergency conditions.
For more information, please go to the Ethics and Public Health in an Age of Terrorism information page.