Public Health Preparedness
Improving the capacity of the public health system to respond to bioterrorism is a challenge that involves forging better links between the public health and public safety systems, installing improved disease and syndromic surveillance systems, and understanding the resources required to prevent, detect, or mitigate the consequences of a bioterrorist attack. The public health community is challenged to join the fight against terror while still attempting maintain defenses against everyday illnesses. At the same time, the promise of dual-use systems and procedures has often failed to materialize. One of Gryphon Scientific's chief goals is to develop tools to help public health authorities respond efficiently and effectively to their new preparedness mandates.Example Projects
Estimating the Medical Resources Needed to Respond to Incidents Involving Weapons of Mass Destruction
For the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality of the Department of Health and Human Services, Gryphon was part of a team that built a software-based tool that enables local emergency planners to estimate the medical resources needed to respond to incidents involving chemical, biological and radiological incidents. The tool calculates the medical needs required by any urban area in the US to respond to attacks with chemical weapons, toxic industrial chemicals (TICs), contagious and non-contagious biological agents, natural disease outbreaks, radiological dispersion devices, improvised nuclear devices, high-energy radioactive point sources and high explosives (covering the entire CBRNE spectrum). On this team, Gryphon Scientific provides one of the two principal investigators. Furthermore, the Gryphon team developed the module that produces casualty estimates (including the time-dependent appearance of casualties) that would result from these incidents through the use of sophisticated source terms and dispersion, epidemiology and pathogenicity/ toxicity models. These models are based upon information drawn from the biomedical, biophysical and biochemical literature.
Guiding Preparedness Policy
Gryphon staff serve on the Rad/Nuke Integrated Project Team to help DHHS develop triage protocols in the aftermath of nuclear incidents and to efficiently acquire and deploy the medical countermeasures needed to respond to incidents with radioisotopes, nuclear accidents and nuclear weapons. Gryphon staff supported the drafting of the Botulinum Toxin Playbook to guide ConOps for DHHS in the aftermath of a contamination event. Furthermore, Gryphon staff performed research and modeling to help guide the decisions of the Blood and Tissue Working Group of DHHS to identify the tissue and blood banking needs of the US in the aftermath of a variety of incidents. Additionally, we have developed scenario injects for use at the national political party conventions and, most recently, the presidential inauguration. These scenarios draw heavily upon data in the medical and engineering literature to ensure that the source terms, attack footprint and consequences are realistic and based on the best available data.
End-to-End Study on Attacks with Antibiotic Resistant Biological Agents
The Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’s) Technology Directorate chose Gryphon Scientific by name to perform an end-to-end study examining the possibility and feasibility of an attack with multiply-drug-resistant (MDR) bacterial agents, including the impact of such agents compared to non-MDR agents, the production of such agents, the availability and efficacy of alternate countermeasures, and the strategies to limit the threat. The conclusions from this study were based on careful consideration of the medical and microbiological literature, as well as interviews with carefully selected subject matter experts. For our analysis, we created epidemic curves for the diseases caused by B. anthracis, Y pestis (including secondary transmission), B. pseudomallei, B. mallei, F. tularensis and R. prowazekeii. It appears that we are the first group to build epidemic models for several of these agents. Each model incorporated the efficacy of various schemes to deliver mass prophylaxis to prevent disease or death, including prevention against the engineered agents. Additionally, the study included a careful assessment of the efficacy of about 50 antibiotics against each of these threat agents (either wild-type or engineered). The study was briefed to the Homeland Security Council and at the Assistant Secretary Level DHS and HHS. We have received numerous compliments for the thoroughness, creativity and scientific rigor involved in the effort.
Providing Preparedness Assistance to State and Municipal Executives
For the Federal Emergency Management Agency (through a contract held by the Navy Postgraduate School), Gryphon Scientific provides subject matter expertise on biological, chemical and radiological hazards for a traveling panel that lends policy and technical advice to governors, mayors and their cabinets. Discussions with these senior executives focus on high-level decision-making and government policy related to the prevention of, preparedness for, and response to terrorist incidents and natural disasters. These topics include decision-making related to alerts from environmental monitoring systems, restoration after an attack, evacuation/sheltering, and continuity of essential services. Policy topics include mass prophylaxis (vaccination or mass distribution of antibiotics), medical surge capacity, and cross-credentialing of medical personnel.
Helping Central Asian Nations Prepare for Pandemic Influenza
Gryphon Scientific is currently leading a World Bank–sponsored avian influenza laboratory design and training project in Uzbekistan. We provide advice on national avian influenza preparedness documents; assist in the development of laboratory guides, standard operating procedures, and biosafety manuals; and provide laboratory training. We have also worked closely with colleagues in other international organizations, such as the World Bank, the World Health Organization, and the Food and Agriculture Organization, to harmonize our efforts and to deconflict objectives.
Guiding the Acquisition and Deployment of Medical Resources
Furthermore, for HHS Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (HHS-BARDA), Gryphon is currently modeling the cost and benefit of supplying a variety of medical countermeasures through national stockpiles, a vendor-managed inventory held by the manufacturers, or through stocks held at hospitals close to high-risk targets. For this project we have modeled attacks and predicted the casualties likely to result in the absence of the countermeasures and in the presence of countermeasures supplied at various times post exposure. We then examined the various means of supplying the countermeasures, modeling the time taken to deliver the countermeasures to the victims and estimating all the cost components of delivering the countermeasures through the system (such as storage costs, purchase costs, disposal costs, costs of ancillary supplies to apply the countermeasure, etc). We then developed a sophisticated, flexible model that enables policy makers to explore how various options for the interplay of various delivery components affect the cost of the overall system and the casualties that result from the scenario. For example, the user can explore a system in which all immediate doses of the countermeasure are supplied by stocks held at local hospitals and how follow-on doses are supplied by a national stockpile and/or a vendor managed inventory.