Nonpharmaceutical Interventions for Pandemic Influenza: Communication, Training, and Guidance Needs of Public Health Officials.

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was to identify the needs of state, tribal, local, and territorial (STLT) public health officials in communicating, implementing, and monitoring nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) during an influenza pandemic. METHODS: A Web-based survey collected data from a nonrandom sample of STLT health departments. RESULTS: A total of 267 of 346 public health officials responded (77.2% response rate). STLTs identified the general public, families, childcare programs, K-12 schools, and workplaces as their priority audiences for NPI communication. Training needs included NPI decision-making strategies, triggers for implementing NPIs, and communicating NPI recommendations to families and communities, as well as a more practical orientation and real-world examples of how to incorporate NPI guidance into preparedness and response activities. Information is needed on health messaging for various populations and settings and on the legal authority for implementing specific NPIs. CONCLUSIONS: Future NPI recommendations by CDC should continue to be based on feedback solicited from STLT health departments. To fill identified gaps, CDC used these findings to create NPI guidance and materials to assist in prepandemic planning and preparedness for STLTs and various community settings.

Online Work Force Analyzes Social Media to Identify Consequences of an Unplanned School Closure - Using Technology to Prepare for the Next Pandemic.

BACKGROUND: During an influenza pandemic, the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) may recommend school closures. These closures could have unintended consequences for students and their families. Publicly available social media could be analyzed to identify the consequences of an unplanned school closure. METHODS: As a proxy for an unplanned, pandemic-related school closure, we used the district-wide school closure due to the September 10-18, 2012 teachers' strike in Chicago, Illinois. We captured social media posts about the school closure using the Radian6 social media-monitoring platform. An online workforce from Amazon Mechanical Turk categorized each post into one of two groups. The first group included relevant posts that described the impact of the closure on students and their families. The second group included irrelevant posts that described the political aspects of the strike or topics unrelated to the school closure. All relevant posts were further categorized as expressing a positive, negative, or neutral sentiment. We analyzed patterns of relevant posts and sentiment over time and compared our findings to household surveys conducted after other unplanned school closures. RESULTS: We captured 4,546 social media posts about the district-wide school closure using our search criteria. Of these, 930 (20%) were categorized as relevant by the online workforce. Of the relevant posts, 619 (67%) expressed a negative sentiment, 51 (5%) expressed a positive sentiment, and 260 (28%) were neutral. The number of relevant posts, and especially those with a negative sentiment, peaked on day 1 of the strike. Negative sentiment expressed concerns about childcare, missed school lunches, and the lack of class time for students. This was consistent with findings from previously conducted household surveys. CONCLUSION: Social media are publicly available and can readily provide information on the impact of an unplanned school closure on students and their families. Using social media to assess the impact of an unplanned school closure due to a public health event would be informative. An online workforce can effectively assist with the review process.