Emergency Preparedness Week 2022

This week is Emergency Preparedness Week (EP Week), an opportunity to promote the importance of planning and preparing for emergencies. This year, the theme of EP week is Emergency Preparedness: Be Ready for Anything. Emergencies or disasters can occur with little warning. Knowing the risks and hazards and how to prepare for them are vital for everyone’s safety. Individuals, communities and organizations can all be involved in emergency preparedness.

Emergency preparedness at Public Health Ontario

Public health emergency preparedness includes planning intervention activities to prevent, respond to and recover from incidents and emergencies that may put the health of Ontarians at risk. When a public health emergency occurs, PHO takes an active role in supporting our public health partners including the Ministry of Health, public health units, and other health professionals. We provide our partners with scientific and technical information and advice to inform their decision-making and actions, support capacity-building and best practices, as well as provide operational support to provincial and regional partners, and ensure the efficacy and accuracy of our laboratory services. As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown, the public health sector is key to health system emergency preparedness, response and recovery, for infectious disease emergencies and pandemics.

Learning and evaluation are also essential elements of public health emergency preparedness planning, response and recovery. Assessment activities (e.g., in-action reviews, debriefs and after action reviews) provide an opportunity to identify and reflect on lessons learned and highlight strategies and resources to improve future efforts. Check out our Emergency Preparedness page for more information on the many resources and services PHO provides.