Region III Maryland Wins National DHS Award

The Baltimore Urban Area Security Workgroup (UAWG) is pleased to announce the Region III Health & Medical Taskforce as the 2012 recipient of the Homeland Security Award for Outstanding Practice/Program. The award was presented at the 2012 Homeland Security Conference being held in Columbus, OH on Wednesday, May 23, 2012.

The National Urban Area Association, Inc. in partnership with Emergency Management magazine, present the National Homeland Security Awards 2012, to recognize outstanding performance in homeland security program management and practice. The Outstanding Practice/Program award recognizes demonstrable differences that the program has made in the lives of the people and businesses served.

With the leadership and innovation of the Baltimore Urban Area Workgroup, chaired by Robert Maloney (Chairperson, UAWG) and Christina Hughes (Chairperson, Region III Health & Medical Taskforce), the Region III Heath & Medical Taskforce, continue to demonstrate progress towards a more prepared health care infrastructure.

Recent achievements have included: the establishment of a regional Alternate Care Site cache to ensure hospitals can meet surge demands post-emergency; an electronic patient tracking system to aide in reunification of disaster victims and their families; the support of a Maryland Shock Trauma simulator training project to improve the readiness of the healthcare workforce; and the procurement of medical ambulance buses to transport large numbers of patients at once.

The taskforce has continually shown evidence of being in the forefront of advances made in the Healthcare field of Homeland Security and Emergency Management with projects that save money and promote healthcare quality, efficiency, and reliability in the Baltimore metro region.