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Bioterrorism Information Dissemination CollaborativeThe Bioterrorism Information Dissemination Collaborative (BIDC) is an effort to enhance the distribution of clinical and public health information regarding terrorism preparedness and emergency response to the clinical community through their professional associations. In early 2003, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) asked the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) to assist in the coordination of an effort to reach physicians and other health professionals through their professional associations with relevant and timely information regarding smallpox. Since the anthrax attacks of 2001, the CDC had learned that health professionals appreciate up-to-date information provided by the CDC and also place high value in receiving timely, clinical guidance from their own professional associations. Through the AAMC-CDC cooperative agreement, a collaborative initiative was established among eight health professions associations to learn about effective ways to disseminate information to their membership. These eight associations are the American Academy of Dermatology, American Academy of Family Physicians, American College of Emergency Physicians, American College of Physicians, American Osteopathic Association, Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians, and Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America. Together, these groups represent more than 300,000 health care professionals who would be at the front lines during a public health emergency. Each association had had prior conversations with CDC regarding potential activities to inform and educate their members about bioterrorism. At the time of these preliminary discussions, smallpox and the smallpox vaccination program had been the focus of the information dissemination activities. When the BIDC activity was formally initiated in the summer of 2003, recent clinical and public health experiences with SARS and monkeypox suggested that the scope of the project should be expanded to address other forms of terrorism and public health emergencies; therefore, each of the 8 associations chose topics they felt were most relevant to their targeted members. The overall goal of this activity is to better understand methods of informing and educating association members about timely and relevant public health issues in urgent situations and on a day-to-day basis. The BIDC participants agreed that while lessons that were learned through their projects would be relevant to their associations' responses in a terrorist event, these lessons would also inform their associations' activities in response to other public health crises, including natural disasters and naturally occurring infectious disease outbreaks. Each association has been asked to evaluate the success of their dissemination activities and to share what they have learned with the other groups. The anticipated benefits of the BIDC include: developing effective partnerships among the associations, AAMC and the CDC; enabling each association to examine information outreach strategies to their members and to assess those mechanisms that effectively and efficiently deliver information to organization constituents; reducing repetitive or redundant distribution of information; and establishing an opportunity to provide feedback to CDC regarding the content and structure of critical health information, and the modes of its transmission that are most useful to their members. The AAMC is coordinating the implementation of the BIDC across the 8 participating associations, providing administrative management, facilitating communication among the participants, and promoting the use of standard domains of evaluation across the various projects. The eight associations have chosen different approaches to reaching their targeted members and are addressing different information needs. Summaries of each of their projects follow: American Academy of Dermatology |
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