The Incident Command System (ICS) is a standard practice across emergency response teams to promote interagency collaboration during emergencies and disasters. Public health systems are active in disaster response and recovery and are an integral part of ICS structures.
To strengthen long-term recovery that weaves ICS into public health governance, the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, along with the Connecticut Department of Public Health, developed a series of trainings and a tabletop exercise to fortify the state and local public health workforce to improve ICS understanding. This training and exercise program aims to reinforce interagency cooperation between state and local public health agencies, enabling them to better serve communities during emergency situations and promote improved long-term public health outcomes.
Pandemic, biological, natural, and human‑caused disaster‑related public health emergencies have inflicted immense loss of life and economic hardship across the state and local health departments play a critical role in preventing, preparing for, and responding to these events, but existing Incident Command System (ICS) protocols – originally developed for short‑term responses, such as wildfires – were not designed with long‑duration public health crises in mind. As agencies face ongoing threats, they must ensure staff consistently follow standardized processes while also adapting ICS principles to a public health context. The National Center for Disaster Preparedness was developed to:
Develop and deliver a training course on Incident Command Systems for the public health workforce.
Develop a discussion-based tabletop exercise.
Ashley Curtis is a Project Manager for the National Center for Disaster Preparedness. Previously, she was the training focal point for the International Research Institute (IRI) and Bangladesh country manager for the Adapting Agriculture to Climate Today for Tomorrow (ACToday) project. She also contributes to project management and research.
Ashley has worked at the intersection of science and society for over 15 years. Before joining IRI in 2008, she received her master’s degree in environmental science and policy at Clark University. She also worked at the Columbia University Tree Ring Laboratory and served as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in the Philippines. Her bachelor’s degree is in biology from Bard College.
Thomas Chandler, Ph.D., is the Managing Director and Research Scientist at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, an Adjunct Associate Professor at Teachers College, and an Associate Member of the Columbia Climate School faculty, Columbia University. He focuses on post-disaster housing and economic recovery, mass care community sheltering and relocation assistance, pandemic preparedness and response, geographic and social networks, and community preparedness. He is the Director of NCDP’s FEMA training projects.
He has also been the Principal Investigator of a U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) research study, “Evaluation of the Public Health System Response to Hurricane Sandy in the NY Metro Area”; Principal Investigator of a U.S. Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) research/training project, “Visualizing Social Media: New Tools for Research and Practice”; Co-Principal Investigator of a research grant funded by the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative, “Understanding Resilience Attributes for Children, Youth, and Communities in the Wake of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill”; Investigator for a grant funded by GSK: “Resilient Children/Resilient Communities Initiative”; and Co-Principal Investigator of a grant from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene: “Performance Measure Development Project”. His work has appeared in Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, The Journal of Social Studies Research, and Interactive Learning Environments.
Laudan Behrouz-Ghayebi is rejoining NCDP as a Project Manager focusing on the FEMA training grants. She started her public health career working for NCDP primarily focused on the Student Surge Capacity for Outbreak Investigation (Team Epi!) program while contributing to the CDC-funded web-based training programs from 2004-2011. She then went on to work for Columbia University’s G.H. Sergievsky Center to manage a research study, “the Genetic Epidemiology of Alzheimer’s Disease in African Americans,” funded by the National Institute of Aging.
After relocating to Maine, Laudan worked closely with local and regional government agencies on various community-based public health campaigns. She also served as an Infectious Disease Epidemiologist for the Maine Center for Disease Control & Prevention, as Program Manager and Adjunct Faculty for the University of New England’s (UNE) Graduate Programs in Public Health, and as Adjunct Faculty for UNE’s School of Nursing and Population Health. Among the courses Laudan taught were Epidemiology, Infectious Disease Epidemiology and Global Health. Most recently, Laudan was a Writer & Researcher for One River Grants, a New York State-based grants development and consulting firm.
Laudan received her MPH in Epidemiology and Global Health from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
Hannah Dancy is a Project Coordinator with the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP), where she supports the planning and implementation of FEMA training grant-based courses on a wide variety of subjects, including economic and housing recovery, pandemic planning, mass care, Tribal resilience, and more.
Prior to her time at NCDP, Hannah worked at Teachers College at the Digital Futures Institute, where she honed her ability to facilitate meetings, workshops, and trainings in a hybrid setting. She received a Master’s in Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology from Columbia University in 2020. Her research focuses include implementation of nature-based solutions, science communication, and the intersection of a changing climate with novel preparedness and long-term recovery training and education practices.
Josh DeVincenzo, Ed.D., is the Assistant Director for Education and Training and Adjunct Assistant Professor at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness, Columbia Climate School, Columbia University. He recently received his doctorate from Columbia University Teachers College with his dissertation on “Enhancing Capacity in Adult Climate Literacy: Investigating Sustainability Mindsets in the U.S. Emergency Management Profession.”
Dr. DeVincenzo focuses on developing learning experiences associated with FEMA training projects that navigate housing, economic recovery, mass care and sheltering, pandemic planning, and climate literacy. He has developed instructor-led and web-based curricula regarding financial literacy, economic impact analysis, and community partnerships.
He hopes to create accessible and quality educational programming that benefits the common good at scale. He holds a master’s degree in Education Policy, Organization, and Leadership from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and a Doctorate in Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, focusing on Adult Learning and Cognitive Science. He has published his work on climate pedagogy and cognition in esteemed journals and outlets such as the Journal of International Affairs, Routledge, State of Planet, and The Hill.
Lauren Esposito is the Senior Project Manager at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP). In her role, she supports the FEMA training grants, the Cities for Financial Empowerment project, the Pandemic Response and Resource Initiative (PRRI), the Resilient Children/Resilient Communities Initiative, and assorted communication development and dissemination efforts for NCDP research, practice, and policy outputs.
Lauren holds a master’s degree in Interactive Media with a concentration in Social Media from Quinnipiac University and earned her Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute. Over the past twenty-five-plus years, Lauren has worked in marketing and communications, helping organizations, nonprofits, and small businesses reach their critical goals and outcomes. At NCDP, Lauren is interested in leveraging technologies to improve communication outreach and engagement for emergency preparedness, response, resilience, climate change impacts and adaptation, and policy development with special focuses on accessibility through 508-compliance and data visualizations.
Linfan Gan is an Instructional Designer/Staff Associate for the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) focusing on FEMA housing and economic recovery training grants. Linfan graduated from Columbia University’s Teachers College with a master’s degree in Instructional Technology and Media last year. She also holds a B.A. in Early Childhood Education and Family Studies from the University of Washington. Before joining NCDP, Linfan worked with the Digital Futures Institute at Teachers College, where she facilitated school faculty with instructional design for their hybrid and online courses. She is interested in education technology with a focus on creating engaging and immersive learning experiences.
Shuyang Huang is a Staff Associate working on data management and analysis at NCDP. She earned a Master of Architecture degree from Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP) in 2023, and previously obtained an Urban Planning degree there in 2019.
Kayana Waller is a Graduate Research Assistant at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP). She earned her BFA in Filmmaking from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts and is currently pursuing an MA in Instructional Technology and Media at Teachers College, Columbia University. She specializes in video production and instructional media.
Alex Yixuan Xu is a part-time Senior Project Coordinator at NCDP, assisting with designing learning experiences for FEMA training projects. She is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Design and Development of Digital Games for learning at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Alex holds a B.S. in Integrated Digital Media from New York University and is interested in designing accessible learning experiences enabled by educational technology.
Jonathan has over fifteen years of experience in qualitative and quantitative research with significant emphasis on disaster field research and study design, implementation, management, and data architecture and analysis. He contributes to a broad multi-method disaster research portfolio, including natural hazards mapping, rural preparedness, mental health and psychosocial support, community coalition building, and child-focused community resilience. He also has significant experience in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and their use in disaster preparedness and recovery, evaluating the unanticipated consequences of pandemic flu, determining racially and ethnically appropriate emergency messaging, and analyzing the long-term disaster resiliency and recovery issues of Hurricane Katrina, Superstorm Sandy, and the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill. He holds a master’s degree in public health from the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, where he is currently pursuing a doctorate of public health in Leadership in Global Health and Humanitarian Systems.
Antonia Samur is a Senior Staff Associate at NCDP. Her role at NCDP includes conducting research and managing initiatives to support disaster planning and community resilience. Antonia managed a three-year capacity-building initiative for the child-care sector in Puerto Rico, aiming to enhance institutional preparedness to meet the needs of children in disasters. Under this initiative, she led the development of a training curriculum and delivered training. She also teaches about community engagement in disaster management in the MA in Climate and Society at the Columbia Climate School.
Before NCDP, Antonia worked for the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), where she led a global sustainable development education program, and for the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), where she conducted research and policy analysis on social and economic development issues, including childhood poverty and sustainable development in Latin America.
She holds a dual Master’s degree in International Affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia University and the Paris School of International Affairs at Sciences Po. She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Chile.
Antonia is keenly interested in climate change adaptation, community engagement, participatory planning and public policy, applied research, and education.
Qëndresa Krasniqi is a Staff Associate II at NCDP, where she supports research activities related to resilience building, COVID-19, and climate change. In this capacity, she will work on quantifying different elements of community resilience. Qëndresa earned her Masters in Public Administration in Development Practice from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, where she focused on social protection and social safety nets and the role of socio-economic and racial inequities on global food & agriculture systems, food security and access to health care services. Before joining NCDP, she taught Economics and worked in policy analysis and research with the IPCC, Health Care Without Harm and the European Stability Initiative (ESI). She is especially interested in incorporating the understanding of social vulnerabilities related to socio-economic and racial inequities in disaster preparedness and recovery.
Rey Lautenschlager is working on curriculum development at the National Center for Disaster Preparedness and is currently a Master’s student at Columbia Climate School studying Climate change and Society. Previously, Rey worked for the American Red Cross Southern California Region on the disaster cycle services team, responding to large and small-scale incidents and managing the volunteer workforce. Rey graduated from the University of California San Diego with degrees in Neurobiology and Global Health and a minor in Climate Change Studies.
