CNA Provides Catastrophic Disaster Planning Assistance for the Greater Houston Region

In partnership with the City of Houston, CNA has supported the Greater Houston Region over the last three and a half years to enhance regional preparedness for catastrophic-scale disasters. Under the first year of the Regional Catastrophic Preparedness Grant Program (RCPGP), CNA helped the Houston-Galveston Area Council (H-GAC) to plan for scenarios involving a category-5 hurricane and an improvised explosive device detonation.

Under the second year of the RCPGP, CNA continued to assist the Greater Houston Region— particularly the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS) Health Service Region (HSR) 6/5 South—to strengthen its public health and medical preparedness planning and response capabilities. The overarching goal was to develop plans and procedures to achieve a consistent and unified approach for regional public health and medical emergency response.

The basis of this planning initiative was a catastrophic-scale pandemic influenza outbreak in the region, but the resulting plans and procedures have broad applicability to other disaster scenarios that have comparable public health and medical impacts. For this effort, CNA designed a pandemic influenza outbreak scenario specifically tailored to DSHS HSR 6/5 South. We also reviewed past exercises and real-world responses to identify commonalities across best practices and gaps; assessed relevant public health and medical emergency response plans to ensure that they meet federal standards; and conducted a comprehensive range of qualitative and quantitative capability assessments to determine the region’s planning and resource gaps.

As part of these efforts, CNA developed strategic- and operational-level plans that specifically address regional collaboration for public health and medical emergency response. Most notably, the Regional Public Health Coordination Framework formalized the ad-hoc coordination approach among the region’s health authorities by creating the Regional Public Health Strategic Advisory Group to collectively discuss critical policy-level issues and recommend regionally consistent response strategies.

Finally, CNA developed the first H-GAC Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (THIRA), based on newly released guidance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. As part of this process, CNA guided stakeholders from the H-GAC to help: 1) identify threats and hazards of concern; 2) develop Houston-specific contexts for the hazards; 3) estimate impacts from hazards and set desired goals for response; and 4) set preparedness targets. Through stakeholder outreach, open-source research, and application of prior research conducted in the region, CNA drafted the THIRA to provide the region with a deeper understanding of the threats and hazards that it faces and to inform future assessments.