H1N1 Flu Precautions for Your Organization

Please take even 30-60 minutes with key staff to discuss the HHS checklist for faith and community organizations to determine how you can continue your services while minimizing risk to your staff, volunteers and clients. The checklist can be accessed at http://www.pandemicflu.gov/plan/community/faithcomchecklist.html.

Some highlights and additions from the HHS checklist below:

• Determine the potential impact of a pandemic on your organization’s usual activities and services and understand you may have to provide some services differently. For example, how can you still serve your clients/members without bringing a lot of people into your facility? (Red Cross is planning that we may not want to have our volunteers come into our call center during a pandemic, but to staff this from home.) Keep in mind we are not at this stage yet, and there is no cause to abandon normal operations at this time, but we are recommending you take this opportunity to set policy for alternate operations.

• Are there certain activities and services that may facilitate virus spread from person to person that may need to be modified?

• Communicate with and educate your staff, members, clients, and volunteers to stem the virus’s spread. Ensure that what you communicate is appropriate for the cultures, languages and reading levels of your staff, members, and clients.

• Plan for staff absences (due to illness, school/transportation closures, etc):

• What services can you continue to deliver with minimal staffing?

• Who will decide when this will commence and when full services will be restored? (And who is the backup decision-maker?)

• Which staff is needed on-site?

• Can staff work remotely and what tools do they need to do this effectively? (e.g. remote email access, forwarding office phones to cell phones, remote access to shared servers (VPN), mechanisms for reporting/delivering work product)?

• Consider resources to protect your staff such as tissues and hand sanitizer. Also determine resources you may want to have pre-staged in case only essential personnel can come to work.