Monroe County and RIT Partner to Prepare for Bioterrorist Threats

Do you know what to do in the event of a bioterrorist attack?

A number of upstate New York emergency workers will know, thanks to a federal grant to develop a model bioterrorist response system designed to teach ambulance, firefighter, police and hospital workers how to deal with bioterrorism.

Monroe County, one of only three counties in the nation piloting the bioterrorism training funded by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, is developing a four-course online program with the expertise of online learning at Rochester Institute of Technology.

The first course, Bioterrorism: The Traditional Incident Command System for the Non-traditional Responder, begins Aug. 13 and is open to non-traditional emergency responders, such as nurses and physicians working in emergency departments.

Each course, lasting about four weeks, will be lead by a facilitator and will incorporate interactivity between the students. About 30 students will pilot the first course and are eligible to receive continuing medical education credits. The courses are offered free through the Monroe County Department of Public Health.

The remaining three course modules are Bioterrorism 101, How Public Health Emergencies Differ from Traditional Emergencies, and Management of Public Health Emergencies. They will begin to be deployed later this year and will all be available in 2002.

The target audience for the courses ranges from public health officials and workers in emergency departments to traditional first responders, such as police, fire and EMTs.

Monroe County was chosen to receive the grant funding to develop a model bioterrorist response system as it already has in place an excellent network between emergency response agencies, i.e. police, fire stations, hospitals.

"The reason we chose to partner with RIT for this project is because of their substantial experience and success in online learning," says Jack Doyle, Monroe County executive. "Our public health workforce that responds to this type of emergency is widely dispersed in the community. The online learning method of bringing people together to train them, anytime, anywhere, fits our needs perfectly."

Monroe County also chose RIT because of online learning's ability to incorporate interactivity into the learning experience.

"Interactivity between students and faculty is what distinguishes our online learning program and is what will distinguish these courses from the other two counties participating in the pilot program," says Joeann Humbert, interim director of online learning.

RIT's online learning will provide the technical expertise and infrastructure for the course modules. The course content comes from Monroe County.

Included in the scope of the project is research to evaluate the courses' effectiveness. The project's purpose is to find a teaching model that works which can then be used throughout the nation for bioterrorism preparedness training.