CDC Response to Public Comment 2

Dear Ms. Weiss,

Thank you for taking the time to provide input on our proposed research project, “Effective Communication in Public Health Emergencies – Developing Community-Centered Tools for People with Special Health Care Needs.” We appreciate your recognition of the need for this type of project and your support and comments.

As you indicated, our proposal will use an online portal to deliver a survey directly to families with children who have special health care needs. Additionally, we are partnering with organizations that have strong links with families of children and youth with special health care needs and who may use email and other platforms to distribute the survey and ensure that we reach as many families as we can during this project. We agree with you that it is important to collect data from both providers and families themselves, and our project intends to do that with surveys, interviews, and focus groups. These surveys include links to the websites of public safety agencies that provide additional information on emergency preparedness. We will also share the analysis of our findings with the providers and public safety agencies who can use this information to tailor their emergency communication plans for at-risk families.

With respect to your comment about increasing the burden time, we believe that the proposed burden time of 419 hours accurately captures the burden this project will place on research participants, including the interviews we have proposed. Please keep in mind that the burden hours do not incorporate the time it will take investigators to conduct the research, including tasks like data processing. Rather, this number pertains only to the amount of time research participants will provide as part of the data collection process.

Thank you again for your suggestions and support.

Sincerely,

Esther Chernak, MD, MPH Keri Lubell, PhD

Principal Investigator Technical Monitor

Drexel University Centers for Disease Control and Prevention