Two projects and efforts stand out to me for what I am most proud of in my career thus far. First is the development of the Bioresponse Program at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). As a new grad in the fellowship program and having just come from the CDC, I began paying attention to the West African Ebola outbreak early in 2014. My boss at the time tasked me to monitor the outbreak and lead initial efforts to prepare the hospital should a patient suspected/confirmed for the infection present to one of our facilities. Planning and preparedness grew into an enterprise-level effort with multidisciplinary collaboration and coordination that utilized the HICS model. During the height of the outbreak, I supported our hospital in responding to the triage, isolation, and treatment of patients under investigation. To take an “all-hazards approach,” I helped transition planning endeavors from Ebola specific to all highly infectious diseases so regardless of the potential communicable disease, our staff were able to identify, isolate, and treat these patients safely, confidently, and comfortably. Over a six-plus year period, I managed a multi-million-dollar grant to sustain preparedness efforts, developed a training center and created a Training & Education Coordinator position. We utilized these efforts for MERS-CoV, Zika Virus, and ultimately tapped into this work to initiate response to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. Our hospital was able to initiate response and activate incident command to mitigate early impacts of the pandemic because of our Bioresponse program.
To increase the representation of women at every level of emergency management in order to achieve the industry’s objectives of building resiliency and of effective and equitable planning, response and recovery.
To provide easily accessible resources and content that supports women as they explore, engage, and grow in careers in emergency management careers.
Women leaders at every level of emergency management and increased exposure to the field so that more women know about the strong, stable and impactful careers in the emergency management field.
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