Oklahoma is one of the states better-prepared for a public health emergency.
Oklahoma moved up one tier from last year on the "Ready or Not" report from the Trust for America's Health and is now considered in the report’s "high performance" tier.
The report looks at 10 indicators of readiness for a public health emergency, including public health funding, whether states allow licensed nurses from other states to practice with patients and how many people got flu shots in the most recent season.
One factor in Oklahoma’s improved standing this year is more people got their flu shot during the 2018-2019 season than in the prior year, though the state could still do better than its 51% flu vaccination rate.
"That vaccine is important both to protect the public and it’s a surrogate marker for whether or not we have a good system in place if we have a new vaccine for something, say, like coronavirus," said Trust for America’s Health President and CEO John Auerbach.
Increased public health funding and achieving two levels of accreditation also pushed Oklahoma up a tier.
Auerbach said while Oklahoma joined 24 other states and Washington, D.C., in their top performance tier, getting more public and private workers access to paid time off should be a focus.
"In situations where people don’t have paid sick time, they’re much more likely to come to work when they have an infectious disease and to spread that infectious disease to their coworkers and to, in some instances, the public," Auerbach said.
Last year, 55% of workers in Oklahoma had paid time off. Auerbach said 68% in neighboring Texas did, a good target to aim for.
Public health emergencies include not only natural disasters and disease outbreaks, but also some more unusual situations.
"It was a public health emergency when we were trying to determine what within the vaping products was causing the serious pulmonary problems and sometimes deaths, and we considered the increase in opioid overdoses to be a public health emergency," Auerbach said.
The Trust for America's Health is asking Congress to reauthorize funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to allocate to states for public health emergencies.
