Dear colleagues,

In most of the disaster events, regional and international assistance are available to affected areas and typically arrive days following the impact to help take up all needs and bridge the gap between the surge phase and the resumption of routine delivery. In some events (e.g., global pandemic), there are not the typical resources available to extend to neighboring regions. In such cases, building local response capabilities can greatly enhance community resiliency. The acute and postacute phase intrinsic response capability can be greatly enhanced through a regional and sustainable interagency emergency management system.

The successful management of emergencies and public health crises depends on the adequate measures implemented in all levels of the emergency chain of action, from policy makers to the general population. It starts with appropriate risk assessment, prevention, and mitigation, and continues to prehospital and hospital care, recovery, and evaluation. All levels of action require well-thought-out emergency management plans and routines based on established command and control, identified safety issues, functional communication, well-documented triage and treatment policies, and available logistics. All these characteristics are capabilities that should be developed and trained, particularly when diverse agencies are involved.

In addition to institutional responses, a robust, community-based disaster response system can effectively mitigate against and respond to all emergencies. A well-balanced response is largely dependent on local resources and regional responding agencies that all too often train and operate within “silos”, in the absence of interagency cooperation.

The importance of this Issue is its commitment to all parts of emergency and public health crisis management from a multiagency perspective. It aims to discuss lessons learned, introduce new ideas about flexible surge capacity, and show the way it can practice multiagency collaboration.

The main goal of this Issue is to bring together public health perspectives on the management of crises and develop the idea of multiagency management from a wider perspective.

Prof. Dr. Amir Khorram-Manesh
Collection Editor

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• public health
• emergencies
• disaster
• flexible surge capacity
• multiagency approach
• training
• exercises