Code Triage: Integrating the National Children's Disaster Mental Health Concept of Operations Across Health Care Systems

This article describes the National Children's Disaster Mental Health Concept of Operations (“CONOPS”) model (Schreiber et al, Acad Emerg Med. 2011;18:s59; Schreiber et al, Disaster Med Pub Health Prep. 2012;6:174-181) as a method to address discrepancies between research advances that have been made and the typical methods of providing mental health services to children after disasters. Three key CONOPS strategies are described: (1) the PsySTART Disaster Mental Health Triage System, (2) a child-focused Incident Action Plan (IAP), and (3) a continuum of risk stepped-care model that matches the level of evidence-based treatment interventions with the level of identified risk using a stepped-care framework (Zatzick et al, Ann Surg.

Source: Clinical Pediatric Emergency Medicine - November 17, 2014 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Merritt Schreiber, Sandra Shields, Stephen Formanski, Judith A. Cohen, Lauren V. Sims Source Type: research