National Recognition for NET Health

TYLER – The Northeast Texas Public Health District, or NET Health, is getting some national exposure. The FEMA Getting Real II Conference is being hosted in Arlington through Wednesday and will feature best practices among disability and emergency management leaders from across the country. NET Health’s Anderson County Public Health Emergency Preparedness Coordinator, Stephanie Walker, has been invited to share NET Health’s promising practice during the event and showcase its work toward integrating accessible resources into its planning efforts.

According to NET Health CEO George Roberts, “This year, FEMA has committed to building partnerships and sharing promising practices. A promising practice can be identified as a practice, approach or method that’s proven to have gained a positive outcome. The objective of the conference is to identify those practices that strengthen the whole community’s capacity to prepare for, respond to, and recover from the impact of disasters. These practices must also emphasize inclusion, integration, dignity, independence, accessibility and self-determination for individuals with disabilities before, during and after a disaster.

“The NET Health Public Health Preparedness department has created a series of videos in accessible formats to serve deaf, blind, limited sight, hard of hearing, cognitively delayed, and limited English proficiency audiences. These videos are the key focus of the presentation.”

“I hope to bring about awareness of the resource, share our resource, as well as inform those in attendance of the importance of integrating multiple audiences in resource creation and to develop partnerships with other entities to further advance our planning efforts,” said Stephanie Walker, NET Health Anderson County Preparedness Coordinator.

Roberts continues, “The resource we developed has been adopted by many emergency management offices across the United States and Canada. We are proud to highlight our work to a national audience in this venue and hope to develop further partnerships for success.”