| Home > Events > Disease, Disaster, and Democracy, 2006 > Conference Speakers > Monica Schoch-Spana Closing Remarks
Monica Schoch-Spana, PhD Speaker biography | Summary | Audio Transcript
Just to pick up on Roger's last comment, it was deliberate to be tacking back and forth between relying on people's advice and their investment in public policy decisions that are under way, and also relying on their arms and legs. Because what's been interesting to watch...for individuals who've been involved in disaster mitigation from a natural hazards point of view, it's already a done deal that you have to rely on volunteers. That's been a harder lesson to sell, I think, within the medical and public health realm, because we're used to relying on highly trained professionals to help us handle health matters. [With regard to] the ethical or bioethical dilemmas on the other hand–those tough decisions and trade-offs that have to be made–there's a sense within the medical and public health community that maybe we should be having more deliberation. So, there are strengths coming out of folks who have more of an emergency management and disaster mitigation background, with regard to natural disasters–strengths coming out of that professional and hazards-related history, and the strengths that are coming out of the medical and public health circles, where there are difficult choices made on a daily basis with regard to care. Some good news that I would like to leave you with is that this is not a one-off event. We will post the event proceedings online; we want to thank our co-conveners for offering to assist us in distributing knowledge of this event. We invite you and your organizations to send your members to the website to access the proceedings which will be written in a summary fashion, but also full transcripts where we have permissions from the speakers to share that broadly. Thank you to the residents of Grand Bayou for permission to share those comments. More importantly, though, because we don't want this just to be an archived set of knowledge, and quickly forgotten–it was interesting to hear from Maggie Fox that what was news in September of last year, even though it's "old," may have to be treated again as "new news" because we've already forgotten it. So, this is not about archiving our conversations; it's about acting on our conversations today. [In light of that point] I'd like to announce that today's proceedings will be fodder for the deliberations of a Working Group that will focus explicitly on citizen engagement and public health emergency planning. Many of the participants and speakers today are members of that working group, which will be stood up over the summer, and is tasked with issuing best principles and practices guidance in the fall–hopefully just in time for flu season. The Biosecurity Center also intends to consult with you, our summit attendees. You decided to spend a whole day with us in pursuit of understanding the feasibility and the societal benefit of citizen engagement in a health emergency context. I think there is a lot of energy and interest and institutional momentum that can be harnessed to push this agenda further. We will be in touch with you about how we can harness our respective energies to promoting this agenda. It's hard to summarize what transpired today, personally because I'm tired, but also because it was such a rich, rich conversation. It touched on many themes. There is a hunger within neighborhood associations and other community-based organizations, among individual citizens, and a variety of public health and public safety groups and various levels of government–an interest in this thing that we're calling public involvement. We spoke earlier about–despite there being a hunger for this sort of thing–it is a preparedness and response dimension that has unfortunately been low visibility, although that is changing. This is not something that happens simply out of passion. There has to be thoughtful investment of time and energy and resources in making this, as Elaine put it, putting it into the DNA of our approaches to governance in today's world. It's not something that we add and stir, as Tara brought up before–it's a conscious investment. This is why we're packaging this summit in terms of the concepts of disease, disaster, and democracy, where our goal is collaborative problem-solving. I'd like to conclude the day with some thanks to some spectacular people. First, to our presenters and round table participants who gave us much, much to think about, to take back to our respective communities, and mull over and wonder how it is that we can act on all these brilliant ideas. So, thank you to all of our participants. To our attendees, thanks for your time. It was a full day, in a month that's chockfull of competing events and interests, and nice weather outside, so thanks for staying within the hotel's four walls. Thanks to the Biosecurity Center leadership for embracing this event and footing the bill. It again speaks to the vision that comes out of a group that was conceived by our keynote presenter today, Dr. DA Henderson, and led under the visionary leadership of Dr. Tara O'Toole. My thanks to our co-conveners in helping shape the program, identifying attendees, and in the future promoting the proceedings. And the organizers behind the scenes...because it really does take a village to pull off a conference. One can imagine what it would take to pull off the delivery of large-scale medical services. So if you will stand so that we can give you the recognition that you deserve, Andrea Lapp, who is our events planner, and got everyone here, traveled, fed, and watered; Molly D'Esopo, who designed our program and other visual delights associated with the conference; Crystal Franco and Jen Nuzzo, who were right-hand women in terms of devising the program agenda and advanced materials; to our information technology and digital gurus, Ted Priftis, Bill Boggs and Mary Beth Hansen; and lastly, but not least, the analysts who were pretty much the trouble-shooters that handled all the things that sort of fall into their laps, and they do it with great humor, Clarence Lam, Andrew Mulcahy, Allison Chamberlain, Christiana Usenza, and Jonathan Gross. Did I miss anybody? And thanks also to Mr. Bruce Campbell who signs the checks. Thank you. We will definitely be in touch because, quite frankly, there's a lot of work to be done on this issue and we're going to share it with all of you. Have a good afternoon. Proceedings of the May 23, 2006 Summit: Disease, Disaster, & Democracy Transcription by CastingWords |
