Literature Review of Emergency Operations Centers

We worked with the World Health Organization (WHO) on foundational steps towards developing evidence-informed guidance for building, maintaining, and using public health emergency operations centers. First, PHP conducted a systematic review of the existing peer-reviewed and gray literature as well as standards and best practices from standards organizations and governmental agencies. PHP then used recommendations, best practices, and standards from the systematic review report’s results and conclusions to develop a list of indicators for describing a public health EOC. These indicators formed the basis for a questionnaire for EOC-NET participants, which was planned for distribution in Spring 2014 to assess EOCs’ capacity to provide effective public health emergency response.