Medical Center counters terrorism

o contribute to the region's and nation's counterterrorism efforts, the Medical Center has established a Center for Disaster Medicine and Emergency Preparedness. The center will coordinate hospital planning for the 18 hospitals in the nine-county Finger Lakes region; develop guidelines and a training program to assist counties with recruiting, training, and deploying mental health professionals during times of disaster; and research and establish best practices on how to handle large numbers of people exposed to radiation from "dirty bombs."

"In any given region, academic medical centers are the repository of very specific knowledge and skills," says C. McCollister Evarts, CEO of the Medical Center. "Experts in such areas as rare disease identification, vaccine development, and radiation are readily available, along with the facilities, equipment, and health care professionals to handle mass casualty disasters."

The Medical Center has national expertise in several areas critical to homeland security, including radiation biology, development of biosensors, disaster mental health, design of new vaccines, and clinical decision support systems.

"We are honored to be among the handful of academic medical centers leading the charge to ensure our nation develops preparation and response plans for terrorist events," Evarts adds.

During the next year, the center also will sponsor a series of symposia covering such topics as biosensors and detection of terrorist agents, new therapies and countermeasures, hospital preparedness, and community preparedness for terrorism. The first symposium, "Combating Terrorism: New Technologies for the Detection of Chemical, Biological, and Radiological Agents," will be held June 3.

For more information on the new Center for Disaster Medicine and Emergency Preparedness, call x5-6618.

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