Preparedness
What We Do
The Preparedness Team provides leadership to protect the health of Kansans through efforts to mitigate, prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters, infectious disease, terrorism, and mass casualty emergencies.
Responsibilities
To accomplish this, our responsibilities include:
- Health and medical planning and response in Kansas
- Coordinating the Emergency Support Function (ESF) #8
- Maintaining the Health Alert Network (KS-HAN)
- Serving as the grantee for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and Health and Human Services (HHS) health preparedness grants.
We promote all-hazards planning (in the absence of a specific threat) for capabilities that require response regardless of the cause. A variety of exercise scenarios are prepared to contribute toward planning purposes for health preparedness.
New Crisis Standards of Care Guidance
The Kansas Crisis Standards of Care Guidance (PDF) is a resource to assist hospitals in planning for events that may require contingences to help cope with increased impact from a surge event. This document was created with the help of both professionals and community members in order to create a guidance that was comprehensive, equitable, and provides an all-hazards approach.