Case Analysis: County Department of Public Health: Organizing for Emergency Preparedness and Response

Case Summary

After the anthrax attacks of 2001, the federal government passed the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002, which provided the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) with $3 billion for fiscal years 2002 and 2003. The CDC then gave the funds to states and asked all public health organizations to focus on specific areas to rebuild the public health infrastructure and adequately prepare for a bioterrorism event or large-scale health emergency. The Public Health department at Penville County, headed by Dr. William Brown, began to implement an Emergency Preparedness and Response system (EPR) for the county. Dr. Brown created a new division within the County Department of Public Health (CDPH), the Epidemiology and Biodefense Preparedness and Response (EPI/BDPR) division, which merged the existing Epidemiology department with the new BDPR unit. This problem case study illustrates the effort to coordinate and regulate the response to a large-scale health emergency. Dr. Brown, this new division, and CDPH faced issues related to leadership style, personnel management, and process development.

Leadership style: Autocratic to transformational

Dr. Brown’s maintains an autocratic style of leadership, where he is the decision-making authority and does not consult his employees for input. As leadership research in healthcare has shown, there is a strong correlation between a manager’s leadership style and staff job satisfaction, retention, and organizational commitment (Gilmartin 394). Brown surprised the EPI/BDPR division with new changes instead of gathering feedback from the division directors, who would have the most insight as to what needed to be changed.

To better lead the CDPH, I recommend that Dr. Brown adopt a transformational style of leadership with open communication to allow input from division directors. Transformational leadership is correlated with lower turnover rates, higher productivity, and higher...