In May of this year, students from the School of Health Management and Policy at Arizona State University helped design an important exercise to test the ASU pandemic preparedness plan in collaboration with the ASU Decision Theater.  Most public health experts are concerned about the likelihood of a pandemic of avian influenza and organizations at all levels of government are creating plans for meeting the needs of the community during such a crisis.

The Decision Theater is a world class facility that supports complex modeling and collaborative decision making in an immersive multimedia environment.  The exercise allowed for data to be delivered to policy makers through series of a realistic TV news reports and multimedia presentations and attempted to simulate potential health outcomes based on policy decisions.  The University president, senior University leadership and federal, state and local health authorities took part in the exercise to test the university’s first comprehensive pandemic preparedness plan.  Teams of participants were faced with complex decisions as the pandemic flu spread in unpredictable ways. In a university environment, containing an epidemic is contingent on a fully staffed health center, isolating the sick in dormitories, and the availability (or shortage) of antiviral drugs in the state.

As the simulated flu outbreak escalated into pandemic proportions, University leadership representing Campus Health, law enforcement, finance, planning, communications, residential life and legal affairs collaborated to make tough decisions.  ASU hopes that this exercise may serve as a national model for testing emergency response plans to global biological threats.