ABSTRACT
The Emergency Management cycle is just as important to the Public Health Official (PHO) as it is to any other person or agency that has a role in dealing with incident response. It is only through planning and training, under the preparedness portion of the cycle, that PHOs will know how to adequately respond to a major incident that is clearly beyond the scope of a routine emergency. A PHO is not going to be involved in a routine emergency. These are almost always best handled by local fire, police, and EMS resources on a daily basis.
