A Scorecard Tool for Medical Deployment Military Readiness

In more than 4300 cities around the globe, multi-disciplinary teams have applied a scorecard process to help identify, evaluate and recommend priority actions for public health emergencies and natural disasters. A leading expert who has helped develop and apply this process in the United States, Oceania and beyond, believes strongly in its ability to serve military readiness as well.

The Disaster Resilience Scorecard for Cities was developed by leading global health experts, including Benjamin Ryan, Ph.D., clinical associate professor of environmental science at Baylor. An addendum, the Public Health System Resilience Scorecard, builds on that framework-with military application. Ryan has overseen the scorecard’s application after both natural disasters, such as cyclones or hurricanes, and public health emergencies like COVID-19. After more than 4,000 applications around the world, his experience with the scorecard has invigorated his belief in its utility for military applications.

“We are working on enhancing mission readiness for medical deployments, particularly urgent deployments within a 24 to 72-hour period,” Ryan says. “With a multidisciplinary group and a systematic a process to identify needs, gaps and wants for deployment, this process can be tailored to medical mission readiness and map out what you need to rapidly deploy a medical team to the field.”

Field Utility

The scorecards developed by Ryan and colleagues is based on the WHO’s Health Emergency and Disaster Risk Management Framework, and has been a consistent tool since its development; online versions were developed at Baylor. Ryan believes a few hours invested with the scoreboard could be invaluable for military medical teams. Current challenges like monkeypox or Japanese encephalitis provide examples of challenges that tax local health infrastructures and impact those exposed.

“Dynamic scenarios can lead to unexpected surprises,” Ryan says. “This process focuses on questions like emerging diseases, weather, workforce capability, transport, security and pharmaceutical suppliers. When you come to the end of it, you have a set of priorities to address before deploying your team. Ideally, because you are pre-planning, many of those priorities could be addressed within a 12 to 24-hour period.

Ryan has worked, taught and researched environmental health and disaster management across the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and North America. His experience has been called on by the World Health Organization and United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction. In addition to working at nearly all levels of government in Australia, he has partnered with the U.S. Department of Defense at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies. There, he provided leadership to strategic humanitarian assistance efforts for a 10-nation area, and served on the U.S. delegation for emergency management.

“My hope is to share this tool and the ability it provides and transition it to deployment. This is a tool that could be developed with Baylor and handed over to the military, based on knowledge acquired across multiple countries and in both urban and rural settings.”