Suzanne Smalley with the Georgia Hospitals Association demonstrates how a strong link between agencies and personnel provides for a strong response.

Cooperative training exercises have numerous benefits and strengthening the link between agencies is just one participants in a workshop in Forsyth experienced.
 
The workshop was held to help determine how possible it may be to bring multiple agencies together for the purpose of training throughout the next two years.

"For [emergency preparedness] exercises, the most important thing is relationships and really working across lines and communicating up, down and across," said Georgia Hospital Association drills and exercise coordinator Suzanne Smalley. She was one of several to present information to the group of more than 160.

Having representatives from the Georgia Department of Public Health (DPH), hospitals, emergency management, law enforcement and other fields train together provides greater familiarity with each other and can help clarify the role of each in an emergency or disaster. Many agencies have similar preparedness exercises each are required to complete. Aligning the training calendars for multiple agencies can reduce the expense for such training.

"When you have all the partners that are going to be involved in an actual response training and preparing together, well that just makes it more seamless when the event happens," said Matthew Crumpton, DPH preparedness training and exercise manager.

Presentations on the benefits of cooperative training were presented to the audience members, who also had the opportunity to work directly with others who are responsible for their specific area of the state. The process of creating a master calendar for training then began with the hopes to create a comprehensive online schedule.  That, in turn, will allow more professionals the chance to take part in training sessions that have already been planned.

-Story by Eric Jens, DPH Communications