Public health preparedness is critical to ensure rapid and effective response to emergencies, outbreaks, and disasters. For the last several years, CDC has released a national snapshot of states’ performance on key public health indicators. As we’ve seen year over year, Arizona continues to score high marks on preparedness. Like last year, this year we received a perfect score for biological and chemical laboratory testing, and we’ve maintained our excellent performance measures for incident management, administrative preparedness, and medical countermeasures. Our response times for activating our emergency operation center have been much better than the national average for the last three years, and our chemical laboratory detection capabilities have been fully “demonstrated” and “passed” for three years running.
Beyond just the report card, Arizona’s effective public health preparedness performance has been evidenced in 2015 through multiple events including Superbowl preparedness, the early 2015 measles outbreak, ongoing Ebola preparedness activities, and our response to the recent cucumber-related Salmonella outbreak.
You can view this year’s National Snapshot report to see how Arizona compares to the rest of the nation. Also, check out the resources on Just in Case Arizona to see how you and your family can be personally prepared.
