Emergency Preparedness and Response

The Emergency Preparedness and Response Program (EPRP) is a federally funded grant program that is responsible for maintaining plans that ensure an effective and efficient response to public health emergencies in Tulsa County.

The program is made up of the following core functions:

Planning: maintains and updates emergency operations plan and engages with community partners to include a whole community approach to public health response plans
Community Outreach: develops partnerships with community agencies to ensure agreements are in place to protect the population during a public health emergency
Logistics: maintains a cache of mission ready supplies and equipment to support public health emergency operations
Training and Exercise: provides training to employees, volunteers and community stakeholders before an emergency occurs to ensure a coordinated response
OKMRC: the Oklahoma Medical Reserve Corps recruits, trains and credentials volunteers to be a workforce multiplier and fill medical and non-medical roles in support of a public health emergency
Response Team: trains with the Tulsa Fire Department Hazardous Materials response team, Tulsa Police Department Bomb Squad and OK Air National Guard to ensure coordinated response efforts for emergencies with a biological or radiological threat.

Emergency Preparedness and Response Program has planned for and responded to many public health infectious disease outbreaks over the years such as H1N1 novel influenza, measles, mumps, Ebola and seasonal flu. COVID-19 has become the largest public health emergency response since the program’s inception in 2002 and the longest activation duration.

Selfless Dedication

From Alicia Etgen, EPRP Program Manager: EPRP planning, response and recovery activities are based on 15 public health preparedness capabilities that rely on strong partnerships and engagement with stakeholders in the community. The years of implementing lessons from past responses to improve logistical preparation, planning, training, exercise and volunteer recruitment set us up for success to fulfill the roles assigned to EPRP during the COVID response.

The COVID-19 success story that makes me the proudest is the selfless dedication of the nine EPRP team members who led in every aspect of the response to ensure the community was served. The team of nine put in over 21,000 hours of work to support the COVID response and were available to meet the needs of internal and external community partners seven days per week, 24 hours per day.

EPRP staff established the phone bank and served as unit leaders to ensure the public had access to accurate, timely information regarding the response. Scheduling staff to fill the operator roles, researching the rapidly changing messaging regarding COVID, providing just-in-time training multiple times per day to the volunteers and employees assigned to the phone bank was extremely labor intensive.

EPRP staff identified the locations and set up all the COVID-19 testing sites, which required new contracts and agreements to accommodate the logistical needs to keep the public safe during testing processes. The testing coordination also involved ensuring test kits, laboratory resources and results reporting were provided to community partners. EPRP led the development and implementation of a new platform for scheduling and results reporting in three languages. These activities were occurring seven days per week.

Vaccine Distribution

The Emergency Preparedness and Response Program (EPRP) had to use creativity and innovation when planning, constructing and operating the COVID-19 testing and vaccination Points of Dispensing (POD) sites. For every POD site, there is a distribution plan in place that is to be utilized during a public health emergency. Each plan has its own premeditated layout, clinic and traffic flow, throughput numbers and number of staff needed. These plans have been in place since 2002 and took months of planning before the locations were exercised and finalized. Under normal circumstances, EPRP’s plans would be used. However, due to the political nature of COVID-19, the 15-minute post-vaccination wait period and social distancing, EPRP’s plans were no longer relevant and the team had to improvise new process flows with each facility.

Between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021, the team stood up nine different locations, each with their own unique layout and staffing needs. The preidentified areas at the POD sites were not available for use which lead the team to creating new layouts and identifying the number of staff and Oklahoma Medical Reserve Corps Volunteers (OKMRC) needed to operate the site. The EPRP team had to develop in less than one week for each location for what initially took months of preparation. Often, there were times when EPRP had to demobilize a POD site at the end of the day and immediately set-up at another location. In the middle of the team’s efforts, they were required to identify and create a community vaccination center (CVC) where federal governmental agencies, such as FEMA and the Department of Defense, would operate. This task and operation required EPRP to be onsite daily - including weekends. Not only were they operating the CVC, they were also managing and maintaining the additional POD sites that were setup. The team worked tirelessly every day ensuring the POD sites were set up, supplies were available and that all staff positions were identified.

EPRP is a program of nine individuals and without the team’s ability to think quick and improvise, the COVID-19 response wouldn’t have been as successful as it was. If there was a position that needed filled, an EPRP team member would fill it. Whenever supplies needed to be delivered to multiple locations, EPRP would divide and conquer. Daily, the team would be pulled in multiple directions due to the demands of the COVID-19 response. EPRP is used to thinking outside of the box. This response allowed those outside of the program to see and understand how innovative and creative the team really is and provided multiple opportunities for our skills to shine.

By the Numbers

50 people representing Tulsa County partner organizations attended the Annual Stakeholders Meeting
4 OKMRC volunteers participated in the Black Health Counts Event (non-COVID-19) and contributed 24 volunteer hours, resulting in $1,004.36 in cost savings

COVID-19 - EPRP and OKMRC (7/1/2020 – 6/30/2021)

1,946 COVID-19 volunteers
17,092.25 COVID-19 volunteer hours
$653,864.63 COVID-19 volunteer cost savings
9 EPRP employees
21,660.83 total hours spent working the response
2,406.76 average hours per employee
246 total days of POD operations - 113 SWOD (testing), 84 CoVax POD, 49 CVC
18,681 specimens collected at THD public testing sites and high risk settings
78,875 calls received at the COVID phone bank
122,132 vaccinations given - 95,996 at CoVax, 5,727 at CVC, 20,019 at vaccine clinics, 390 at high risk settings
71,808 positive COVID cases in Tulsa County
1,148 COVID deaths in Tulsa County

Created By

Tulsa Health Department

Appreciate