Exercise developed and produced by:

Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Studies

National Memorial Institute for the Prevention of Terrorism

Office of Justice Programs, National Institutes of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

Introduction and Chair

Transcript  [Listen to this talk]

DR. SCHOCH-SPANA: Our second panel is focused on the "Health and safety of actual people, not a theoretical public." And what we meant by that title is the need to get to the complex reality that stands behind the placeholder phrase the general public. I mean, we use the phrase general public and the population, and the people as if it's all clear who we mean. And I hesitate to add another layer of complexity, such as the diverse community that constitutes the United States, to take that complex reality and then heap it onto the complex threat that is bioterrorism. But there is grave peril if we continue to perpetuate some homogenous notion of a general public, if what we're trying to do is to shut down an outbreak and involve people who are directly affected, or indirectly affected, or tuning in from Spokane about what's happening on the east coast, if we fail to involve everyone. So we want to move away from notions of a statistical population or a faceless mass, and pay attention to the actual people who are affected by an actual event, paying attention to differences of life cycle. Are we tending to the needs of children, tending to the needs of adults in the prime of their life, and also aging Americans in the United States? Are we paying attention to ethnic and cultural diversity within our United States? And remarks by the earlier panels brought home the message that there are pre-existing social fault lines in the United States that either can be exacerbated during a crisis, or hopefully help mended during a crisis, and hopefully mended ever before crisis, and we need to work on that, as Bob pointed out.

There is a varying sense that the interest and perspectives of some groups are included in public policy, apart from the differences that exist, socio and economic differences in the United States. There are also historic senses of does my voice matter when public policies are made? Are my people included in the discussions of the American population?

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