Delegate Stacey Plaskett (D-VI) and the National HIT Collaborative for the Undeserved, Inc., hosted a congressional briefing on disaster preparedness and talked about building an innovative national response network in underserved communities recently.
Former V.I. Delegate Donna Christensen moderated the conversation. which focused on establishing an up-to-date health and healthcare infrastructure for the U.S. Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and other rural communities nationwide, according to a statement from Plaskett’s office. The briefing reportedly covered lessons learned from the California wildfires and the hurricanes last year that devastated Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico as well as the U.S. Virgin Islands.
According to its website, NHIT is a public/private community partnership that was launched in 2008 with support from several federal government agencies. The website says its mission is to “optimize the involvement of underserved communities in the development and use of health information technology as a means to support and sustain health equity and economic viability.”
Greg Godbout with NHIT Care Campaign, Lynda Chin with Real-world Education Detention and Intervention at UT Systems and Sarah Baker with Healthcare Ready were among those in the discussion. They focused on the importance of bridging the gap between public and private sectors when developing a disaster response plan, establishing proactive healthcare measures to ensure safety of citizens during national disasters and the integration of information technologies into primary care as a way to use electronic methods to manage information about people’s health and health care services during disasters.
Madeleine Bordallo, the at-large representative from Guam, gave insight on being a non-voting member in Congress and how important she felt it is for the United States to consider the four million citizens living in the U.S. territories when formulating national policy decisions.
“The ability to communicate is critical to an adequate response in a disaster. We were glad to be able to work with Congresswoman Stacey Plaskett and others to provide this briefing which brought together panelists to demonstrate how legacy technology, together with innovative ones, can address and avoid the deficiencies experienced in Harvey, Irma and Maria” Christensen said in the statement.
NHIT Chief Executive Officer Luis Belen said the organization will continue to work with Plaskett and others in the federal government and private sector to bring digital infrastructure in Puerto Rico and the USVI “in a way that give American Citizens in the territories or who are elsewhere in the U.S. access to their health information, whether they stay in the continental U.S. or go home.”
