Case Study
SARS has wreaked havoc on your city, and people are afraid. Businesses have closed, thousands are quarantined, and the public is anxious for news from authorities. What should you, as a business leader, do next?
That’s precisely the type of scenario the CDC Foundation’s Institute of Public Health Law will address, well before a crisis hits.
“In an outbreak situation, the private sector cannot afford for government to fail,” says Gene Matthews, J.D., director of the Institute of Public Health Law. “Triple budget deficits at the federal, state and local level mean governments are going to need significant help from the private sector to cope successfully.”
Matthews describes three phases businesses will have to contend with before, during and immediately after an emergency:
- Normal time: before an emergency, business as usual;
- Red zone: during an emergency, intensity ramps up and normal legal and policy assumptions all change;
- Grey zone: immediately after an emergency, when there is a small window of flexibility to rapidly change laws and policies
“We will be building partnerships to think beyond the red zone,” says Matthews. “Right after a crisis, communities become much more cohesive. In Toronto, even though 27,000 people were quarantined for SARS, not a single person appealed. With foresight, leaders can plan for the rise in social capital that takes place during and immediately following an emergency. It’s too late to be thinking about your agenda the morning after an outbreak. You need to think it through while you’re living in normal times, and build partners now.”
Some specific ways the Institute will help expand business legal preparedness include:
- Hosting discussions to gain business perspective and share lessons learned
- Facilitating networking between businesses within a community before a crisis unfolds
- Convening businesses and public health professionals to discuss the economics of an emergency such as closing facilities, communicating with employees, rationing drugs and allocating resources by public and private decision-makers
- Developing common sick leave policies regarding quarantines and developing clarity on the limits of business insurance policies related to outbreaks
- Exploring common issues and alliances for “aftermath” legislation relating to liability, compensation and business recovery.
“It’s important to establish connections well in advance of an outbreak,” stresses Matthews. “You don’t want business leaders and public health leaders to be shaking hands for the first time at an emergency operations center.”