The SIMTEC Research Team is proud to announce the release of Exercise Outbreak Orange.
Pandemics and disease outbreaks continue to impact countries throughout the developed and developing world. Currently, Canada is experiencing the threat from Ebola and Avian Flu. Experience with SARS and other outbreaks has demonstrated that patients, their family and friends, and the larger community experienced stressors that extended beyond the presenting physical symptoms. Those required to respond, such as health care workers, decision makers, and first responders/support responders experienced stressors that resulted from making decision within compressed timeframes as well as having concerns for their own and their families’ safety. Exercise Outbreak Orange focuses on these psychosocial impacts; it seeks to determine conditions relevant to optimizing the psychological and social well-being of individuals responding to a pandemic or infectious disease outbreak.
We anticipate the table-top exercise will be very challenging for the participants, both in terms of the scenario content and in terms of the requirement that exercise participants will need to make numerous concurrent high-risk/high-consequence decisions. Exercise participants include both community-based Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) teams and health authority (or equivalent) Health EOCs.
We would like to thank our international and local Pandemic Expert Working Group members for their contributions and help us build complexity and realism into the exercise. Along with the exercise we have a Training and Awareness Video and supportive materials. We welcome your feedback!
This project was initially funded through the former Chemical, Biological, Radiological-Nuclear and Explosives (CBRNE) Research and Technology Initiative (CRTI), and continues under the Canadian Safety and Security Program, a federal program led by Defence Research and Development Canada’s Centre for Security Science, in partnership with Public Safety Canada.
Laurie Pearce
Research Chair, SIMTEC Project
lpearce@jibc.ca
