Development and validation of a new tool for emergency response evaluation

Abstract Information: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) relies on its public health workforce with diverse disciplines, skills, and experiences to be ready to respond during a public health emergency or emerging threat. Managing the challenges of large or complex public health emergencies requires well-trained and experienced response staff. Responders need to be ready to handle the rigorous, multi-faceted demands of a fast-paced response environment to ensure mission objectives are met. To this end, a survey is distributed to CDC responders to gather feedback about their experiences as part of continuous improvement efforts during a rapidly evolving public health emergency. Implementation of past responder surveys identified valuable lessons learned for internal monitoring and evaluation of operational processes and responder experiences. However, an evaluation instrument is critically needed that provides quality evidence from a standardized set of questions to continuously identify strengths and areas of improvement among current and future responses. A survey development process consisting of a review of the literature and purposeful partner engagement was implemented to create a survey that sets the foundation for robust longitudinal analysis of CDC responder experiences. The new survey merges the existing evidence-base collated from the literature and CDC context-specific needs to provide quality evaluation data to response leadership. Data will inform quick decision-making and in-stride improvements during a response, and summative reporting following a response. This session will detail the participatory process used to systematically develop a survey for use during a public health emergency response evaluation. Survey development was achieved with purposeful partners discussions focused on topics important for improving CDC responder experiences within a government's emergency response context. This partner engagement ensured that the survey development process was inclusive and that the final survey was created using diverse perspectives resulting in meaningful information for all prospective users. Additionally, early career evaluators will highlight their experiences in the survey development and validation process, discussing their perspectives of challenges experienced and lessons learned for instrument development in an emergency response within a government context. Finally, the session will conclude with a discussion of future directions for public health emergency response evaluation at CDC.