Learn about public health preparedness issues such as isolation and quarantine, workforce activation/surge, vulnerable populations planning, risk communications, and pandemic influenza preparedness with tools directed towards Local Health Departments (LHDs), businesses, and community agencies.

The Santa Clara County Public Health Department Advanced Practice Center created The Emergency Dark Site Toolkit: A Toolkit on How to Build, Use and Maintain an Emergency Dark Site for Public Health Emergencies. This toolkit is intended to serve local health departments in setting up a public health department emergency dark site -- a static Web page used to post critical public health emergency messages when a server goes down. The Santa Clara County APC, in conjunction with Stanford University and Google, tested their newly created Dark Site during the April 2009 H1N1 outbreak. Due to an overwhelming number of web hits, the Santa Clara County Public Health Department's server went down, resulting in the activation of their Dark Site. When the site was activated, the Public Information Officer had a new tool to manage the public demand for H1N1 information. The Emergency Dark Site Toolkit: A Toolkit on How to Build, Use and Maintain an Emergency Dark Site for Public Health Emergencies includes step-by-step instructions to build your own emergency dark site for public health emergencies. Insert the CD into your computer or download the program and follow the interactive menus to view the simple instructions.

Speak First: Communicating Effectively in Times of Crisis and Uncertainty is a proven, practical training for building the skills to delivering first messages in the early hours of a crisis. Learn what you need to know, how to sharpen your skills, and how to teach others how to master these best practices. This training was designed for two types of users: (1) Trainers who will be teaching Speak First skills to others; (2) Self-directed individuals and group learners. Those who will benefit from acquiring these skills include anyone who may have to speak to the public during a crisis. This could include public health directors, communication specialists, receptionists, on-scene responders, call center operators, elected officials, and others.