# 1803
One of the real treats I had during my trip to Washington was meeting many of the people who attended the exercise, some of whom I'd known via the Internet, but had never met in person.
Dr. Greg Dworkin and I had both worked on the HHS blog in 2007, but had never met face-to-face, and Sharon Sanders of Flutrackers and I have talked via Skype many times, but never in person. Both of those lapses were corrected on this trip.
One of the people I was extremely delighted to meet was Lisa Schnirring of CIDRAP (Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy) out of the University of Minnesota. Like many of you, I've been reading her excellent reporting for some time now.
Here is her report on the exercise. This is just a snippet, please follow the link to read the whole article.
HHS includes online services in pandemic communication drill
Lisa Schnirring
Staff Writer
Mar 19, 2008 (CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently held a tabletop exercise to assess how it could best work with the news media—including blogs and other online-only information sources—to get status updates and vital health information to the American people during an influenza pandemic.
The session was held on Mar 17 at HHS headquarters in Washington, DC. Representatives from online avian-flu information services such as Avian Flu Diary, FluTrackers, FluWiki, WebMD, and CIDRAP News participated in the exercise along with those from several national media organizations, including ABC News, National Public Radio, and Reuters.
The exercise was the second time HHS has reached out to blogs. In May 2007, the department featured posts from bloggers such as Michael Coston of Avian Flu Diary and Greg Dworkin, MD, of FluWiki in a 5-week pandemic preparedness blog series. HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt hosts his own blog on the HHS Web site. He is the first cabinet secretary to use the online forum, according to HHS.
Bloggers were also included in a 1-day leadership conference that HHS hosted to engage community leaders in talking about local preparedness efforts and seek input on how to tailor HHS's own resource materials.
"We recognize that during a pandemic information could be life-saving. As more and more people turn to the Internet for information and news, blogs have emerged as an important and influential communications tool," HHS said in its invitation to attend the tabletop exercise.
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