_01.jpg)
_02.jpg)
A nurse and public health leader puts talents to work for state’s protection
August 2, 2010
Jane Richter
This is another in a series of reports on the people who have shaped the Arnold School of Public Health as it celebrates its 35th anniversary in 2010.
“We’ve made some substantial changes in the state that I feel pretty good about,” Dr. Jane Richter said with the no-nonsense attitude of a public health veteran.
The director of the Arnold School of Public Health’s Center for Public Health Preparedness at the University of South Carolina (USC-CPHP) is huddled over coffee while briefing a visitor on her seven-year quest to leverage the resources and talents of academia, public health and other first-response agencies to enhance South Carolina’s efforts to deal with natural or man-made catastrophes.
The USC-CPHP is one of 27 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention supports, all located at accredited schools of public health. In a surprising grant of liberty for a government agency, the CDC has allowed each of the centers to shape its mission in support of local and state needs.
The USC-CPHP has established a niche in helping stakeholders respond to the threat of coastal bioterrorism, in addition to natural disasters and other emergencies. The USC-CPHP’s efforts in large measure have been shaped by Richter’s eclectic background and experience.
“I am not an expert, but I do have a wide base of knowledge,” said Richter, a research assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences.
That’s undoubtedly why she was asked to contribute a chapter on public health response in an important new book, International Disaster Nursing, released in May 2010. The book is billed as a “comprehensive and internationally-focused resource to address the diversity of issues and myriad scenarios that nurses and other health personnel could encounter during a disaster event.”
- Richter is a hands-on type of leader, something she’s learned during her 38-year career in nursing and public health. She’s collaborated with other experts to develop a web-based, interactive course, Ethics and Public Health in an Age of Terrorism, and helped build a statewide communications system for hospitals and healthcare agencies called SCHEART (South Carolina Healthcare Emergency Amateur Radio Team).
- But in a key area, Richter and her colleagues have learned to garner job satisfaction somewhat vicariously. Over the course of seven years, they have developed a team-based training strategy that develops linkages that result in long-term collaborations.
- “What we do is facilitate the process. We take a group of between 10 and 12 individuals who have identified a problem or a need and, using the center’s planning strategy, they work over a period of months to develop a solution that is uniquely theirs,” she said.
One such product of team-based training is the S.C. Environmental Surveillance Network. Dr. Geoff Scott, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Center for Coastal Environmental Health and Biomolecular Research in Charleston, and his oceanographer colleague, Dr. Scott Cross, have spearheaded the development of the web-based network that will serve as an early-warning system and send alerts in near real time – a feat that is something out of the ordinary.
“Currently, for example, the Department of Natural Resources monitors fish and wild bird mortalities; Clemson University Livestock Poultry Health collects data on domestic animals, to include poultry; DHEC monitors fish kills and dead birds suspected of carrying West Nile disease, and NOAA has data on marine mammal strandings,” said Richter.
“By providing the means to overlay all of these data sets, we can quickly see if there is something amiss that could signal a broader problem or one affecting human health. It’s similar to miners having a canary in their coal mines to indicate when deadly gasses are present,” she said.
A pilot web site is being tested. “If development continues as expected, the site could be operational in about six months,” Scott said.
The early warning concept takes on additional meaning should a bioterrorism threat be made against the state’s main port in Charleston, the fifth busiest port in the United States. The port is host to more than 5,000 cargo ships a year and innumerable pleasure boats and cruise ships, he said.
Charleston also handles 500,000 shipping containers a year -- about 25 percent of U.S. commerce.
Moreover, the port is a strategic military post, and more than 90 percent of military supplies to Iraq and Afghanistan pass through Charleston, he said.
The S.C. network could serve as a model for adoption by Gulf Coast states, particularly relevant given the Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster occurring in the gulf. Sharing of the network is a concept included in the center’s request for continued funding from the CDC.
Richter is not the first department head to be on pins and needles while a funding source ponders their fate, but she has a lot of support from partners with whom she has worked. She also is working to secure other funding sources. Whatever happens, Richter said, she is satisfied in having had a long, fulfilling career.
Born in Rochester, N.Y., Richter earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing from Saint Anselm College, a master’s degree in healthcare facilities management from Webster University and a master’s in long-term care nursing from George Mason University.
In 2000, she earned a doctorate from the Arnold School’s Department of Health Promotion, Education and Behavior while working as the nursing director in DHEC’s Wateree Health District headquartered in Sumter.
She and her husband, Paul, a former Army lieutenant colonel who retired in 1992 after a 21-year career, share the same interests on and off the job. He is the emergency management coordinator for the S.C. Hospital Association.
In addition to running the center, Richter trains on her own time as the supervisor nurse of the S.C. Disaster Medical Assistance Team (SC1DMAT), a group of professional and para-professional medical personnel -- supported by a cadre of logistical and administrative staff -- that is federalized and mobilized to provide medical care during a disaster or other event.
Richter was part of the South Carolina DMAT team that deployed to Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The team served outside the Ochsner Clinic in New Orleans, working 12-hour shifts around the clock to provide healthcare and immunizations to the community and fellow responders.
She also serves as a registered nurse in the Medical Reserve Corps, a volunteer group organized to provide secondary support to the local emergency response during times of public health emergencies.
