That really big disease

In my role as managing director of a survey research group at a school of public health, I get about six journal articles published per year (as a co-author), but not all of those articles are equally important. The article that was just accepted today is one that is pretty important to me. It is based on a survey we did in September 2006 to try to measure how the public might respond to “community mitigation” measures in the case of a pandemic flu outbreak and to examine the problems people would face in coping with illness in their family, prolonged school closures, and disruption of their employment. We presented the results of our survey at a meeting of The Institute of Medicine in late 2006, and the findings were used to help formulate some aspects of the federal government’s plans for dealing with an outbreak of pandemic flu. So here’s the reference, obviously incomplete until the article is actually published.

Robert J. Blendon, Lisa M. Koonin, John M. Benson, Martin S. Cetron, William E. Pollard, Elizabeth W. Mitchell, Kathleen J. Weldon, and Melissa J. Herrmann, “Public Response to Community Mitigation Measures for Pandemic Influenza,” Emerging Infectious Diseases, in press.