Emergency Risk Communication for Healthcare Professionals

Experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and healthcare providers worldwide rely on each other to protect the public's health ― especially during emergencies, disasters, and disease outbreaks. The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the vital link between CDC and the healthcare partners they serve, from raising awareness of emerging health issues to promoting the latest life-saving guidance.

The Clinician Outreach and Communication Activity (COCA) and Health Alert Network (HAN) team at CDC acts as a bridge between experts across the agency and diverse clinical professionals.

Commander Ibad Khan (United States Public Health Service), who leads the COCA and HAN teams at CDC, answers questions about their mission, approach to communicating with clinicians in times of uncertainty, and lessons learned from more than 15 years of emergency response work.

Describe the COCA and HAN team at CDC.

The COCA and HAN team focuses on emergency preparedness and response communication tailored to healthcare professionals. Our work serves physicians, nurses, physician assistants, pharmacists, paramedics, veterinarians, and epidemiologists; health department officials; and public information officers at federal, state, territorial, tribal, and local levels.

Our team liaises with experts at CDC to produce content and trainings that cover a host of emergency preparedness and response topics, such as influenza, severe weather and natural disasters, and infectious disease outbreaks. In 2022, our team supported multiple projects, including the ongoing COVID-19 response, seasonal influenza, mpox, Ebola, opioid prescribing, polio, cholera, dengue, and melioidosis.

How does CDC communicate with healthcare professionals before, during, and after public health emergencies?

CDC often communicates with healthcare professionals through the agency's topic-specific centers, institutes, and offices. Our team helps these groups notify, alert, and educate healthcare providers, so they are ready to respond to health threats. Whether there's a spike in influenza activity, a regional disease outbreak, or a new trend in antimicrobial resistance, we amplify the latest data, guidance, and technical resources.

Our team also works closely with CDC's Emergency Operations Center (EOC), which has dedicated staff monitoring health threats 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Depending on the scale of a public health emergency, CDC's EOC might mobilize resources or "activate" for a response. Often, this process involves forming a special communication coordination and leadership unit called the Joint Information Center (JIC). The JIC consists of several teams (including ours), each of which has a technical focus or dedicated audience. Together, we strive to provide consistent, credible, actionable, and accessible messaging for all partners.

How does the COCA and HAN team share the latest CDC guidance with healthcare professionals?

Although COCA and HAN are one team, it might be helpful to think of the activities as different "channels." COCA primarily uses webinars and email blasts to provide clinical information, updated guidance or recommendations, and training opportunities:

COCA Calls: One-hour webinars where experts present key emergency preparedness and response topics and answer attendees' questions. Each COCA Call includes a presentation, a list of resources, and often continuing education credit. These webinars can be viewed live or on-demand.
COCA NOW: Email newsletters that provide timely and concise health updates, guidance, and resources for healthcare professionals.

CDC shares updates about urgent public health threats through a national alert system called the Health Alert Network, or HAN. During times of uncertainty, our team works around the clock to quickly disseminate HAN Messages to clinical and public health partners, so they have timely and reliable information to make decisions and provide the best possible patient care.

We distribute HAN messages to state, local, tribal, and territorial HAN coordinators. They then share them through their networks of state and local public health agencies, healthcare providers, hospitals, and emergency management officials. Members of the media, clinical partner organizations, and COCA subscribers also receive these alerts. Collectively, HAN messages reach over 1 million recipients.

What role do healthcare professionals play in emergency response?

Healthcare professionals are on the front lines of public health emergencies, so they play a critical role in elevating issues and alerting CDC about potential health threats. CDC has a robust field epidemiology presence that's responsible for public health surveillance and collaboration with state and local public health officials. Healthcare providers are encouraged to contact health department representatives (at various jurisdiction levels) to report concerns, which are escalated to CDC headquarters through existing channels if needed.

For questions or comments about COCA-specific content, healthcare professionals can email us at coca@cdc.gov. During our COCA Call webinars, attendees can submit questions in real time, and we try to answer as many as we can during the live question-and-answer session. After the webinar, we review each question and send them to the appropriate CDC expert who may provide a direct email response. These questions also offer insight into content needs and are used to inform future public health materials.

These communication channels and other monitoring systems involving healthcare professionals are vital to CDC's emergency response efforts. For example, in April 2021, healthcare providers shared reports of adverse events following the administration of the Janssen (Johnson & Johnson) COVID-19 vaccine through the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and the V-safe safety monitoring system. As a result, CDC issued its rare Health Alert Level message and swiftly held a COCA Call webinar. By partnering with healthcare professionals, CDC and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) were able to quickly share information about the recommended pause while agencies conducted a thorough safety review.

How is CDC adapting to meet the needs of healthcare professionals during emergency responses?

CDC is constantly looking for ways to improve how it communicates with clinicians. With every emergency response, our team evaluates what worked well and what could be modified to best serve the public and health professionals. For example, during the 2014 Ebola outbreak, we received feedback about the accessibility of our content and quickly moved to offer live captioning during all webinars. After every webinar, we now upload a captioned on-demand video, a full transcript, and playlists of relevant training opportunities. We value all feedback, whether large or small, because it helps us to build trust, better serve the public, and prepare for future emergency responses.