The team in Oakland County is relatively mature in preparing for a pandemic or viral crisis. The county has a comprehensive preparation and response plan (see Resource Section for this plan) and over the last three years the Oakland County Health Division has provided a mass-vaccination clinic to exercise the public health readiness plans. The OCHD also reaches out to other partners and collaborates with county all-hazards emergency management teams, the Sheriff’s Department, local fire and police jurisdictions, local and regional hospitals and emergency medical services.

Yet, George, Sara and Phil were eager to be as prepared as they could be. They assembled their teams to assess the findings from their planning, exercises and experiences to determine where they need to go next in preparing for and responding to a major pandemic crisis.

The team found they had three significant areas for innovation and improving the maturity level of their overall abilities.

1. Cross-Boundary Planning – they need to move past silo-based planning and create a new environment that enables the sharing of information and content across boundaries and a better understanding of the location and level of resources both prior to and during a crisis situation.
2. Extending Reach – they need to extend the reach of their information and content to members of the community and private sector and they need to be able to both “push and pull” this content to partners in order to better align organizations, roles and responsibilities.  
3. Interoperability and Awareness – they need interoperability of major communication devices and the ability to gather and share situational awareness information during an event in order to ensure their response is working optimally and to be able to adapt in real-time to changing situations.