Technical Assistance and Tools for Health and Emergency Management Professionals

Technical Assistance Centers

ASPR Technical Resources, Assistance Center, and Information Exchange (TRACIE): ASPR TRACIE is a healthcare emergency preparedness information gateway that ensures all stakeholders at the federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial government levels; in nongovernmental organizations; and in the private sector have access to information and resources to improve preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation efforts. ASPR TRACIE supports timely access to information and promising practices, identifies and remedies knowledge gaps, and provides users with responses to a range of requests for technical assistance.
Regional Emergency Coordinators: Regional Emergency Coordinators (RECs) serve as ASPR’s primary representatives throughout the country at the regional level. The RECs build relationships with federal, state, local, tribal and territorial officials and healthcare representatives (partners and stakeholders) in order to conduct planning for effective federal emergency response, and facilitate coordinated preparedness and response activities for public health and medical emergencies.
Disaster Technical Assistance Center (DTAC): DTAC helps prepare states, territories, tribes, and local entities to deliver an effective mental health and substance misuse response to disasters.

HHS emPOWER Map: The HHS emPOWER Map is an interactive online tool to help community health agencies and emergency management officials in disaster preparedness as they plan ahead to meet the emergency needs of community residents who rely on electrically powered medical and assistive equipment to live independently at home. The integrated data accessible through the HHS emPOWER Map can help community organizations, including hospitals, first responders, and electric utility officials, work with health officials to prevent health impacts of prolonged power outages due to storms and other disasters on vulnerable residents. To learn more about all the ways you can use the HHS emPOWER Program tools, check out the free, online training.
GeoHEALTH: GeoHEALTH is ASPR’s secure Geographic Information System (GIS) based, electronic, interactive mapping application. This application incorporates information from numerous sources both internal and external to HHS. GeoHealth provides a single visual environment for enhanced situational awareness, assessment, and management of resources for planning and response to natural, man-made or pandemic events.

HHS emPOWER Program Web-Based Training: The HHS emPOWER Map Prorgram provides dynamic data and mapping tools, such as the HHS emPOWER Map, to help communities protect the health of more than 4.1 million Medicare beneficiaries who live independently and rely on electricity-dependent medical equipment and health care services. This course is designed to help partners understand the HHS emPOWER Program and integrate its mapping and dataset tools into their emergency preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation activities.

Strategic National Stockpile Course Listing: The Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) helps prepare state, local, tribal, and territorial responders to react effectively during an emergency when stockpile items are deployed. Learn about opportunities for training, technical assistance, and guidance to help partners receive and make effective use of products from the stockpile, developing and exercise their preparedness plans, and more.
HHS/ASPR Access and Functional Needs Web-Based Training: The HHS/ASPR Access and Functional Needs (AFN) Web-Based Training defines the concept and requirements for addressing the AFN of at-risk individuals, and provides tools and resources to help you address the AFN of at-risk individuals in your community during disaster preparedness, response, and recovery activities.

Healthcare and Public Health (HPH) Risk Identification and Site Criticality (RISC) Toolkit: The RISC Toolkit is an objective, data-driven all-hazards risk assessment that can be used by public and private organizations within the HPH Sector to inform emergency preparedness planning, risk management activities, and resource investments. The RISC Toolkit provides owners/operators in the Sector with nationally recognized standards-based evaluation criteria in an easy-to-follow, guided format.

HHS Response and Recovery Compendium: HHS Response and Recovery Resources Compendium is an online collection of the federal resources and capabilities available to mitigate the health impacts of emergencies. The compendium offers an easy-to-navigate, comprehensive, web-based repository of HHS products, services and capabilities available to state, state, tribal, territorial, and local agencies before, during, and after public health and medical incidents. The compendium spans 24 topics, each of which contains a list of the major HHS capabilities, products and services that support that function, a brief description of each and information on accessing them.
DisasterLit: DisasterLit is a database of disaster medicine and public health resources selected from over 700 organizations. Thesresources include guidelines, government and other technical documents, plans, videos, and training classes.
Public Service Announcements for Disasters: This library of Public Service Announcements (PSAs) provides a wide variety of announcements on common issues in disaster preparedness, response and recovery. They can be used to help health communicators provide timely messages about what people can do to protect themselves, their families and their communities during disasters and emergencies. They are available in a wide variety of formats, including tweets, vines, podcasts, YouTube videos, broadcast scripts, and broadcast videos.

NowTrending.HHS.gov: NowTrending.HHS.gov is a web-based application that searches open source Twitter data for health topics and delivers analyses of that data for both a specified geographic area and the national level. Health departments and other health entities can use this tool in multiple ways, including as an indicator of potential health issues emerging in the population, to build a baseline of trend data, or to engage the public on trending health topics.

CHEMM: Chemical Hazards Emergency Medical Management: CHEMM provides guidance on planning, response and recovery related to chemical mass casualty incidents. The tool enables first responders, first receivers, other healthcare providers, and planners to plan for, respond to, recover from, and mitigate the effects of mass-casualty incidents involving chemicals.
REMM: Radiation Emergency Medical Management: REMM provides guidance on the clinical diagnosis and treatment of mass casualty radiological/nuclear events for health care providers. The tool includes just-in-time, evidence-based, usable information with sufficient background and context to make complex issues understandable to those without formal radiation medicine expertise.
WISER: Wireless Information System for Emergency Responders: WISER is a system designed to assist emergency responders in hazardous material incidents. WISER provides a wide range of information on hazardous substances, including substance identification support, physical characteristics, human health information, and containment and suppression advice. The system contains information on over 400 chemicals and radiologic agents.