1 in 6 health workers unlikely to respond in pandemic flu emergency and other flu news

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About 1 in 6 public health workers said they would not report to work during a pandemic flu emergency regardless of its severity, according to a survey led by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“Employee response is a critical component of preparedness planning, yet it is often overlooked. Our study is an attempt to understand the underlying factors that determine an employee’s willingness to respond in an emergency,” said Daniel Barnett, MD, MPH, lead author of the study and assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Overall, 16 percent of the workers surveyed said they would not report regardless of the severity of the outbreak.”

Results of the online survey of 1,835 public health workers in Minnesota, Ohio and West Virginia are published in the journal PLoS ONE. The study was funded by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.