Speaking Points
	•Importance of close working relationship between public health organizations and hospitals
	•The key point is that all emergency response is local, therefore all preparedness must be local
	Narrative
	Some events require close cooperation between public health departments and hospitals.  For example, following the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, public health officials were prepared to ensure that there were medical personnel available to provide on-site assessment of the health risk, to treat people who were injured on-site: people caught in rubble, hand and foot injuries, eye injuries, respiratory ailments.  These are areas where the public health department may not have the personnel of expertise to provide the actual hands-on medical treatment.  Therefore, the public health departments need to have a preparedness plan to enable them to communicate with hospitals in the area should the need arise, to request assistance of this nature.  The federal government can handle this to an extent, but this doesn’t happen right away, so the preparedness plans at the local level must address these issues.