A Word From the President

It Could Happen Again

No one needs to be reminded of the horrific events of Sept. 11, 2001, and the subsequent anthrax attacks that racked the country with the added fear of bioterrorism. Postal facilities and government buildings were evacuated, businesses all over the country were disrupted, and the academic medicine community was urgently called into action to respond to what had suddenly become the very real threat of terrorist attacks on our homeland. Teaching hospitals and medical schools worked intensely to prepare early response efforts in the event of additional violence. And additional attacks seemed all too imminent for a nation in shock in the aftermath of the worst foreign attack on American soil.

The Department of Health and Human Services, the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Institutes of Health received large emergency appropriations from the federal government. Grants were hastily disbursed to “first responders” and scientists to both improve the nation’s disaster preparedness and to study how best to defend ourselves against possible widespread bioterrorist attacks. Although they rarely make headlines these days, many of our faculty continue to devote their energy and expertise to this effort.

While our country has by no means forgotten the events of Sept. 11, the sense of immediacy to prepare for future attacks has inevitably lessened in the (thankful) absence of another World Trade Center-like event. The one-year anniversary of Sept. 11 may well draw the public’s attention back to the importance of readying everyone — especially the nation’s paramedics, EMTs, police, fire- fighters, nurses, physicians, epidemiologists, and public health officials — for the possibility of another attack. In any case, our challenge is to avoid complacency in the absence of another event; we dare not assume that Sept. 11 was a “one-time deal.”

In response to this challenge, in November 2001 the AAMC, joined by prominent politicians and medical leaders, announced the formation of “First Contact, First Response.” This national effort is designed to formulate appropriate curricular and teaching strategies for medical schools, GME programs, and CME providers to enable them to help students, residents, and physicians respond appropriately to possible terrorist attacks caused by biological agents or chemical or radiation exposure.

For its part, the AAMC has charged a distinguished panel of experts on bioterrorism and medical education to assemble materials that will be disseminated this November to medical school leaders, enabling them to review and evaluate their curricular ele-ments that deal with all aspects of bioterrorism. Recognizing the critical need for faculty development, we intend to provide our constituents with guidance in this area as well.

Recommendations for educational objectives developed by the AAMC’s bioterrorism initiative will be presented at various sessions during our annual meeting in November and at the upcoming regional meetings held by the AAMC’s Group on Educational Affairs. Another major leverage point for us is our Cooperative Agreement with the Centers for Disease Control. Through this agreement, our constituents can readily be called upon for assistance as the CDC develops new strategies to combat bioterrorist threats.

The AAMC also continues to be an active member of the “Partnership for Community Safety.” This partnership is a collaboration of organizations representing America’s frontline medical, health, and safety responders, including fire services, hospitals, emergency departments, medical educators, nurses, and public health departments. Its aim is to strengthen community readiness for nuclear, biological, and chemical acts of terrorism by advocating federal support at the community level.

Finally, to showcase how individual academic medicine institutions have addressed the topic of bioterrorism, the AAMC has created a Web site (www.aamc.org/newsroom/bioterrorism) that provides examples of how our members have prepared for such threats in the past. The site also lists current programs that have been added since 9/11 as well as initiatives planned for the future.

Please take a look at this Web site to learn how your colleagues are responding to the threat of bioterrorism. And please send us your own ideas about how to sustain our communities’ vital efforts to prepare physicians and physicians-in-training for the new reality of a post-9/11 world. It may well be a sad commentary on our times that such efforts are necessary, but for us to ignore the new reality is to ignore our obligation to help sustain our free society.

Jordan J. Cohen, M.D.
AAMC President

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