Stephanie Dopson

• Doctorate of Science
• Senior Public Health Advisor at Centers for Disease Control United States

After-Action Reports (AARs) are retrospective summaries that capture key information and lessons learned from emergency response exercises and real incidents. The AAR is a commonly used evaluation tool used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as part of the Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) program. It is used as a metric of...

Since September 11, 2001, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has increased efforts to prepare the agency and public health partners for response to potential nuclear/radiological disasters. During the week of May 16-20, 2022, the CDC participated in a national-level radiological emergency exercise, Cobalt Magnet 22 (CM22). The exe...

We report on five SARS‐CoV‐2 congregate setting outbreaks at U.S. Operation Allies Welcome Safe Havens/military facilities. Outbreak data were collected, and attack rates were calculated for various populations. Even in vaccinated populations, there was rapid spread, illustrating the importance of institutional prevention and mitigation policies in...

Although a body of research suggests that interprofessional collaboration is hindered by the presence of professional boundaries, more recent work has demonstrated that removing these boundaries also has negative consequences for collaboration. To address these paradoxical findings, we examine two different team-level initiatives that aimed at soft...

In April 2017, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) participated in the Gotham Shield Exercise, led by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and in collaboration with other federal agencies to test the federal, state and local government’s ability to respond to an improvised nuclear device (IND). With active engagement from...

Emergence of a novel infectious disease, such as pandemic influenza, is the one global crisis most likely to affect the greatest number of people worldwide. Because of the potentially severe and contagious nature of influenza, a rapid multifaceted pandemic response, which includes nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) and effective strategies for...

Leadership development (LD) activity and its effectiveness has not been explored rigorously across changing university settings globally. As Higher Education settings change radically throughout the world, Higher Education professionals are operating in more uncertain environments, and leaders are taking increasingly complex and diverse approaches...

Laboratory and epidemiologic data are vital to identify a novel influenza A virus and inform the public health response, whether it be to a localized outbreak or pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) developed the Pandemic Influenza Readiness Assessment (PIRA) to evaluate the state of the nation's preparedness for the next...

Objectives: To assess how US Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) awardees plan to respond to an influenza pandemic with vaccination. Methods: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention developed the Pandemic Influenza Readiness Assessment, an online survey sent to PHEP directors, to analyze, in part, the readiness of PHEP awardees to...

Objectives: To assess the readiness to vaccinate critical infrastructure personnel (CIP) involved in managing public works, emergency services, transportation, or any other system or asset that would have an immediate debilitating impact on the community if not maintained. Methods: We analyzed self-reported planning to vaccinate CIP during an in...

When a novel influenza A virus with pandemic potential emerges, nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) often are the most readily available interventions to help slow transmission of the virus in communities, which is especially important before a pandemic vaccine becomes widely available. NPIs, also known as community mitigation measures, are acti...

Mentoring is commonly used to facilitate professional growth and workforce development in a variety of settings. Organizations can use mentoring to help achieve broader personnel goals including leadership development and succession planning. While mentorship can be incorporated into training programs in public health, there are other examples of s...

The public health emergency of 2009 pandemic influenza A (H1N1) virus resulted in supplemental funding provided by Congress to the 62 states and territories. The CDC’s response included deployment of personnel to the U.S. Pacific territories, who provided technical assistance on laboratory capacity, information technology, surveillance, planning, a...

The first Ebola cases in West Africa were reported by the Guinea Ministry of Health on March 23, 2014, and by June it became the largest recorded Ebola outbreak. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention field teams were deployed to West Africa, including in-country logistics staff who were critical for ensuring the movement of staff, equipment, a...

Mobilizing research-based management knowledge into practice is an important, yet elusive dimension of a developing knowledge economy. This paper introduces and explores empirically knowledge leadership as an important but uncommon process for mobilizing knowledge into practice. Drawing on a large, comparative and processual research study of six p...

Learning Objectives: To analyze funding and activities of external public health practitioner member organizations' (member organizations) preparedness and emergency response activities from 2005-2012. Issues: From 2005- 2012, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response (OPHPR) and Influe...

Issue: CDC distributed $1.4 billion in Public Health Emergency Response funds to health departments through a cooperative agreement between July 2009 and April 2010. To assess whether the funds were used appropriately, CDC's Division of State and Local Readiness and Influenza Coordination Unit conducted site visits in 2010 and 2011 to review the im...

More than 40 billion dollars have been spent on public health preparedness since 2001. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) receives approximately 1.5 billion dollars in annual appropriations for preparedness and emergency response. CDC awards almost half of those funds to state and local governments through the Public Health Emerge...

Public health preparedness is the capability of the public health system, communities, and individuals to prevent, protect against, quickly respond to, and recover from health emergencies, particularly those in which scale, timing or unpredictability threatens to overwhelm routine capabilities. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) p...

For health educators to successfully meet the challenges of responding to public health emergencies, it is important to establish and understand the role of collaborations with local, state and federal partners in identifying potential public health issues and to develop theory-based models or strategies to address these issues before, during and a...

The Early Warning Infectious Disease Surveillance program (EWIDS) is part of the Cooperative Agreement on Public Health Preparedness and Response for Bioterrorism administered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The purpose of EWIDS is to develop and implement a program to collaborate with states or provinces across internation...

In 2003 the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) designated $5 million per year to be allocated to the northern and southern states bordering Canada and Mexico for the Early Warning Infectious Disease Surveillance System. The existing Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response Cooperative Agreement is t...

Health services can and should be improved by applying research findings about best practice. This book explores why it proves notoriously difficult to implement change based on research evidence in the face of strong professional views and complex organizational structures. It draws on a large body of evidence acquired in the course of nearly fift...