On September 27, 2019, ASPR awarded $6 million to support the creation of two Pediatric Disaster Care Centers of Excellence (COE) as pilot projects to improve regional disaster response capabilities in the United States.
The cooperative agreement established the Eastern Great Lakes Pediatric Consortium for Disaster Response led by UH Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital of Cleveland and the Western Region Alliance for Pediatric Emergency Management led by University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Health System and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospitals across two HHS regions with nearly 20 million children.
Under this cooperative agreement, the recipients will develop or improve the capability and capacity to provide highly specialized care to pediatric patients within and outside their own regions by:
- developing a coordinated pediatric disaster care capability for pediatric patient care in disasters;
- strengthening pediatric disaster preparedness plans and health care system coordination related to pediatric medical surge in disasters;
- enhancing statewide and regional medical surge capacity for pediatric patients;
- increasing and maintaining health care professional competency through the development and delivery of a standardized training program; and
- enhancing situational awareness of pediatric disaster care capabilities and capacity and assessing regional pediatric readiness.
