In pandemic, some health workers stay home

BALTIMORE, July 24 (UPI) -- If there was a pandemic flu emergency, approximately one in six public health workers say they would not report to work, U.S. researchers said.

Researchers at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore said the online survey was conducted among 1,835 public health workers in Minnesota, Ohio and West Virginia from November 2006-December 2007.

The analysis is based on the Extended Parallel Process Model, which postulates that willingness to follow instructions in an emergency is based on an individual's perception of a threat's validity and belief that the actions taken can be feasibly accomplished and will have a positive impact on the threat.

Lead author Dr. Daniel Barnett said the public health workers who were both concerned about the threat posed by a pandemic, and who were confident that they could fulfill their response roles and that their roles would have a meaningful impact on the situation, were 31 times more likely to respond to work in an emergency than those who perceived the threat low and had low levels of confidence.