Pandemic Flu Forum – we are the solution

The Pandemic Flu Leadership Blog is a five-week long blog campaign to help Americans prepare for a coming pandemic. Each week, a question will be posted and guest bloggers will write about the relevant issue at hand. Comments are open and welcome from everyone. The bloggers are a diverse group of leaders from various sectors of society.

Week 2 asks this question of the blog participants:

What are my constituents concerns? How can I play an important role in communicating the need to prepare?

Michael Coston, retired medic and founder of the Avian Flu Diary shares his thoughts on our roles, as ordinary citizens, in preparing for a pandemic. He begins with a history lesson from World War II when America was mobilized as a nation.

Millions of men and women enlisted in the army. But more than than, millions more joined the war effort on the homefront -

Housewives took off their aprons and donned tool belts, went to work in shipyards and airplane factories, and the legend of Rosie the Riveter was born. Ordinary citizens, many too old for active service, volunteered to become block wardens and aircraft spotters. Teenagers rolled bandages or served donuts for the Red Cross, and volunteers worked in VA hospitals and USO clubs around the nation. Everyone recycled for the war effort, housewives collected grease, and people accepted the need for ration coupons and meatless Tuesdays.

During WWII, there were people called ‘dollar-a-year-men‘, business executives and community leaders who served their nations at little or no pay.

Coston iterates that we need to be having that same mindset in the present time. Some of the ways ordinary citizens can put this mindset on the larger public are the following:

1. Utilize ‘flubies’, members of of flu forums who already are well informed, passionate, and ahead of the curve on pandemic preparation.

2. Send the message out through community town hall style meetings all across the country.

3. Utilize retired medical personnel – doctors, medics, nurses, who can teach home flu care and preventative hygiene classes in our communities.

4. Mobilize community volunteers – ” along the lines of a State or Federally sanctioned Volunteer Pandemic Corps, where citizens can band together to help their communities solve local problems.”

5. And Coston’s personal commitment -

“It is my hope we can create an army of graying volunteers, thin of hair, but not of spirit, to do those jobs during a pandemic we wouldn’t wish upon our children.”

Way to go!

Tags: pandemic flu, forum, leadership blog, HHS