Towards an Equity-Focused Emergency Preparedness and Response Curriculum for Public Health (Watson-Creed, et al., CIHR Catalyst Grant February 2024)

The 2023 Report by Canada's Chief Public Health Officer (CPHO) "Creating the Conditions for Resilient Communities: A Public Health Approach to Emergencies" highlights new roles for public health in preparing for and responding to increasingly complex public health emergencies, including a strong role for health promotion and equity-ensuring approaches. Emergency preparedness and response (EPR) is recognized as a core function of public health, with formal public health agencies expected to respond to a wide variety of emergencies. If public health experts are to play a greater role in managing complex emergencies in the future, it would benefit formal public health agencies to have evidence-informed and pedagogically sound emergency response training. To our knowledge, few formal models for emergency preparedness and response training specifically designed for public health exist. The COVID-19 pandemic has additionally brought into focus the need for such responses to have a heavy emphasis on health equity and decolonized approaches. The proposed 1-year catalyst project aims to: 1. Examine emerging and existing theories and pedagogical approaches to public-health emergency response training; 2. Collect and analyze key actors' descriptions of the gaps and strengths of existing EPR training programs in public health, including their views on equity-based approaches as well as decolonizing and indigenizing approaches to EPR; 3. Apply new knowledge and generate new models to inform the development of new public health training programs designed to teach effective and equitable EPR. This project will serve to inform future work on the development of high quality EPR training for public health in Canada.