By Mary Elizabeth Lonergan<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In March, the National Emergency Management Association (NEMA), a CSG affiliated organization, is hosting an Emergency Management Virtual Learning Lab series exploring topics selected by NEMA members to address timely issues in emergency management and to address lessons learned over the past year. To view the recordings of these sessions,\u00a0visit the NEMA YouTube Channel<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n National Emergency Management Association educated audiences on lessons learned during COVID-19 from different points of distribution during a recent Virtual Learning Lab.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tim Masterson, executive director of Products for Buffalo Computer Graphics, kicked off the discussion by sharing his team\u2019s technological struggles as they tried to create space for staging of necessary supplies like personal protective gear, and the change of those spaces into now vaccine areas. These spaces are called PODs, or points of distribution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis began for us at the start as the demands for PPE, hospitals that needed masks and gowns, sites that needed equipment. This is where we began to learn a lot of our lessons that we carried forward with PODs,\u201d said Masterson. \u201cThe first thing we identified we needed for these sites was a quick, easy form that we could develop, and they could report what they had day-to-day.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Masterson explained that his role is to ensure each site had enough inventory to supply organizations like hospitals. He said training, regulatory challenges, technical difficulties, future tracking and warehousing and distribution were some of the most difficult obstacles they encountered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne of the biggest ones\u2026 How do we make sure we get that security in place\u2014 the tracking in place, the auditing in place\u2014to make sure that tool is going to keep us in compliance,\u201d Masterson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Chris Breitbach, director of emergency management for Allina Healthcare, spoke on a recent mission of supporting Quad County, Nevada Public Health on vaccine rollout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe team I led, we went out as a health and medical task force,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re small, we\u2019re mobile and we\u2019re more responsive and able to move around quickly. We did vaccine clinics at a variety of venues.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Breitbach said he had researched work done in Minnesota regarding vaccine rollouts and was able to make changes to previously created plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI knew some of the complex nature of setting up these vaccine clinics,\u201d he said. \u201cWalking into a different state, I wanted to have an idea of what was happening\u2026we dusted off our closed POD plan, we changed a few words from \u2018flu vaccinations\u2019 to \u2018COVID\u2019 and made a couple of small modifications.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Breitbach credited quality information between teams as a reason for a successful mission and he shared the purpose of Disaster Medical Assistance Teams (DMAT).<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe are in every corner of the country,\u201d he said. \u201cDMAT is helping support state and local assets with some of this vaccine work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n —<\/p>\n\n\n\n To view recordings of the Emergency Management Virtual Learning Lab series, visit the NEMA YouTube channel: youtube.com\/user\/NEMAforyou.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Mary Elizabeth Lonergan In March, the National Emergency Management Association (NEMA), a CSG affiliated organization, is hosting an Emergency Management Virtual Learning Lab series exploring topics selected by NEMA members to address timely issues in emergency management and to address lessons learned over the past year. To view the recordings of these sessions,\u00a0visit the… Read More »COVID-19 Response: Lessons Learned from Managing Points of Distribution<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[124,19],"tags":[166,164,165],"class_list":["post-317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-csg-affiliated-organizations","category-webinars","tag-national-emergency-management-association","tag-nema","tag-nema-virtual-learning-lab"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=317"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/317\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.csg.org\/tcs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}