Att5. Survey Invitation

Attachment 5- Survey Invitation

Dear [Name of Member],

We are reaching out on behalf of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) because your fire department has been selected to participate in a brief survey about fire safety and firefighter line-of-duty-death (LODD).

Every year, 80 to 100 firefighters die in the line of duty. When LODDs occur, the NIOSH Fire Fighter Fatality Investigation and Prevention Program (FFFIPP) conducts independent investigations of firefighter fatalities, and then makes recommendations for avoiding similar incidents in their LODD Investigation Reports.

The NIOSH survey will be distributed to personnel from fire departments across the country to gain a better sense of current safety practices, as well as familiarity and satisfaction with the LODD reports. The information you provide will be used to improve the quality and usefulness of the reports that NIOSH produces and improve how they distribute information to the United State Fire Service to prevent future line of duty accidents and deaths.

Please consider completing this survey [add link here] and encourage others in your department to do so. To make this effort a success, NIOSH must gather information from chief officers, company officers and firefighters. The survey will take between 10 and 25 minutes, and your responses will be kept confidential. To help protect your confidentiality, NIOSH has partnered with an external evaluation team (Oak Ridge Associated Universities), who will combine any information you provide with other responses before reporting overall responses to NIOSH. Your participation is voluntary, and you may decline to answer any question or end the survey at any time.

We will be providing the external evaluation team with a list of emails for all fire departments that have been selected for the survey. If you DO NOT wish to participate in the survey, please notify [Professional Organization] by [date]. Otherwise, we will provide your email address to NIOSH and you will receive a follow up email with the survey link from the evaluation team.

If you have any questions or concerns related to the survey, please reach out to the evaluation team using the contact information provided.

Thank you for helping to improve firefighter safety and NIOSH LODD Reports.

If you have any questions, concerns, or technical difficulties related to the survey, please reach out to the evaluation team ([email protected]).

CDC/NIOSH will treat data/information in a secure manner and will not disclose unless otherwise compelled by law.

Assurance of Confidentiality: We take your privacy very seriously. All information that relates to or describes identifiable characteristics of individuals, a practice, or an establishment will be used only for statistical purposes. NIOSH staff, contractors, and agents will not disclose or release responses in identifiable form without the consent of the individual or establishment in accordance with section 308(d) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 242m(d)) and the Confidential Information Protection and Statistical Efficiency Act of 2002 (CIPSEA, Title 5 of Public Law 107-347). In accordance with CIPSEA, every NIOSH employee, contractor, and agent has taken an oath and is subject to a jail term of up to five years, a fine of up to $250,000, or both if he or she willfully discloses ANY identifiable information about you. In addition, NIOSH complies with the Federal Cybersecurity Act of 2015 (6 U.S.C. §§ 151 & 151 note). This law requires the federal government to protect federal computer networks by using computer security programs to identify cybersecurity risks like hacking, internet attacks, and other security weaknesses. If information sent through government networks triggers a cyber threat indicator, the information may be intercepted and reviewed for cyber threats by computer network experts working for, or on behalf of, the government.