Infectious disease outbreaks, epidemics, and subsequent pandemics are not typical disasters in the sense that they often lack clearly delineated phases. As in any event that is biological in nature, its onset may be gradual with signs and symptoms that are so subtle that they go unrecognized, thus missing opportunities to invoke an early response and implement containment strategies. An infectious disease outbreak-whether caused by a novel virus, a particularly virulent influenza strain, or newly emerging or resistant bacteria with the capability of human-to-human transmission-can quickly degrade a community's healthcare infrastructure in advance of coordinated mitigation, preparation, and response activities. The Transitional Medical Model (TMM) was developed to aid communities with these crucial phases of disaster response as well as to assist with the initial steps within the recovery phase. The TMM is a methodology that provides a crosswalk between the routine operations and activities of a community's public health infrastructure with action steps associated with the mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery phases of an infectious disease outbreak.
  The Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act calls for establishing a competency-based training program to train public health practitioners. To inform such training, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Association of Schools of Public Health managed groups of experts to produce a competency model which could function as a national standard of behaviorally based, observable skills for the public health workforce to prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from all hazards.
 
  A systematic review of existing competency models generated a competency model of proposed domains and competencies.
 
  National stakeholders were engaged to obtain consensus through a three-stage Delphi-like process.
 
  The Delphi-like process achieved 84 percent, 82 percent, and 79 percent response rates in its three stages.  https://www.selleckchem.com/products/nu7441.html  Three hundred sixty six unique individuals responded to the three-round process, with 45 percent (n = 166) responding to all three rounds. The resulting competency model features 18 competencies within four core learning domains targeted at midlevel public health workers.
 
  Practitioners and academics have adopted the Public Health Preparedness and Response Core Competency Model, some of whom have formed workgroups to develop curricula based on the model. Efforts will be needed to develop evaluation materials for training and education programs to refine the model as well as for future training and education initiatives.
 Practitioners and academics have adopted the Public Health Preparedness and Response Core Competency Model, some of whom have formed workgroups to develop curricula based on the model. Efforts will be needed to develop evaluation materials for training and education programs to refine the model as well as for future training and education initiatives.
  To assess hospital employees' attitudes and needs regarding work commitments during disasters.
 
  A 12-item survey was distributed to employees at nine hospitals in five states. Questions addressed willingness to work during a disaster or its aftermath, support services that could encourage employees to remain for extended hours, and conflicting emergency response obligations (e.g., being a volunteer firefighter) that might prevent employees from working at the hospital. Anonymity was assured, and approval was obtained from each hospital's institutional review board.
 
  Of the 2,004 surveys distributed, 1,711 (85 percent) were returned. Eighty-seven percent of respondents were willing to work after a fire/rescue/collapse mass casualty incident. Respondents were otherwise less willing to work in response to a man-made disaster (biological event 58 percent; chemical event 58 percent; radiation event 57 percent) than a natural disaster (snowstorm 83 percent; flood 81 percent; hurricane 78 percent; earthquake 79 percent; tornado 77 percent; ice storm 75 percent; flu epidemic 72 percent) (p < 0.001 for all comparisons by χ
  testing). While 44 percent of respondents would come to work in response to any of the 11 disaster types listed, 19 percent were only willing to cover four or fewer types. Long-distance phone service (694, 41 percent), email access (584, 34 percent), pet care (568, 33 percent), and child care (506, 30 percent) were the most common support needs, and 365 respondents (21 percent) reported a conflicting emergency response obligation.
 
  The majority of hospital workers surveyed were willing to report to work in response to some types of disasters but not others, and some indicated they might not be available at all due to conflicting emergency response obligations.
 The majority of hospital workers surveyed were willing to report to work in response to some types of disasters but not others, and some indicated they might not be available at all due to conflicting emergency response obligations.Von Willebrand disease (VWD) is the most common inherited bleeding disorder and is mainly caused by dominant-negative mutations in the multimeric protein von Willebrand factor (VWF). These mutations may either result in quantitative or qualitative defects in VWF. VWF is an endothelial protein that is secreted to the circulation upon endothelial activation. Once secreted, VWF multimers bind platelets and chaperone coagulation factor VIII in the circulation. Treatment of VWD focuses on increasing VWF plasma levels, but production and secretion of mutant VWF remain uninterrupted. Presence of circulating mutant VWF might, however, still affect normal hemostasis or functionalities of VWF beyond hemostasis. We hypothesized that inhibition of the production of mutant VWF improves the function of VWF overall and ameliorates VWD phenotypes. We previously proposed the use of allele-specific small-interfering RNAs (siRNAs) that target frequent VWF single nucleotide polymorphisms to inhibit mutant VWF. The aim of this study is to prove the functionality of these allele-specific siRNAs in endothelial colony-forming cells (ECFCs). We isolated ECFCs from a VWD type 2A patient with an intracellular multimerization defect, reduced VWF collagen binding, and a defective processing of proVWF to VWF. After transfection of an allele-specific siRNA that specifically inhibited expression of mutant VWF, we showed amelioration of the laboratory phenotype, with normalization of the VWF collagen binding, improvement in VWF multimers, and enhanced VWF processing. Altogether, we prove that allele-specific inhibition of the production of mutant VWF by siRNAs is a promising therapeutic strategy to improve VWD phenotypes.