What We Do

Vision

The Emory community will be disaster resilient and recognized locally, nationally, and globally as a leader in sustainable disaster preparedness, response, and recovery.

Mission

Serve as the center for Emory enterprise-wide planning for and coordinated response to catastrophic events affecting Emory and the broader community.  

CEPAR maintains capabilities to manage crisis response and the consequences that arise from natural and human-caused catastrophic events affecting Emory and the broader community. Examples of such events may include severe weather/tornado, active threat, major structural fire, transportation (aircraft or train) disaster, major hazardous material leak/spill (chemical, radioactive), explosions, civil unrest, mass casualty event, public health emergency (epidemic or pandemic), or a deployment of weapons of mass destruction/terrorist incident.

CEPAR has developed several programs to enhance the disaster resilience of the Emory community and continually works to improve processes relevant to catastrophic event prevention, protection, response, mitigation, and recovery.  Among these include a community outreach and exercises/training program, a behavioral threat assessment team, development and maintenance of the university’s emergency operations plan, emergency operations center and crisis management structure, emergency notification and communications systems, an enterprise-wide business continuity program as well as a public access defibrillation program and student-run emergency medical first responder service.

Crisis and Consequence Management

Learn more about how we address potential and actual events that impact Emory

Highlights of Our Work

CEPAR has a longstanding history of leadership and support for extramurally funded programs related to community disaster preparedness and response, including:

  • Emergency Management for Higher Education Grant awarded by the US Department of Education to implement and demonstrate best practices for emergency management at institutions of higher education
  • An award to develop the Strategy for Off-site Rapid Triage, designed to triage patients during flu pandemics, which was featured on interactive websites hosted by the Microsoft Corporation and the US Department of Health and Human Services during the 2009 flu pandemic
  • Leadership of the Academic-Community Partnership for Sustainable Preparedness and Response Systems, a project of the CDC-funded Emory Preparedness and Emergency Response Research Center, which explored the relationship between academic institutions and the public health preparedness and emergency management communities 
  • Leadership and support for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences’ Worker Training Program Cooperative Agreement to provide education and training for the Infectious Disease Training Network
  • Support for the ASPR-funded and designated Regional Special Pathogens Treatment Center at Emory University Hospital
  • Support for the CDC-ASPR funded National Emerging Special Pathogens Training and Education Center; 
  • Support for the Radiation Injury Treatment Network at Emory University Hospital
  • Leadership and support for the ASPR-funded Regional Disaster Health Response System in HHS Region 4