Media Release

For Immediate Release
Date: January 12, 2007

HEALTH and CDC Will Survey Warwick, West Warwick, and Coventry Residents
Telephone Survey Will Look at Effect of School Closures in the Community and Help Plan for Future Public Health Emergencies

As part of our public health efforts, HEALTH and the CDC are interested in learning about the effects of the recent school closures on the community. Of particular interest are the social and economic impacts that the closure of schools placed on families. This type of community containment measures, but on a much larger scale, would probably be implemented in case of an influenza pandemic. Therefore, we expect the results of the survey to be helpful in our ongoing planning process for pandemic influenza.

We plan to gather information in two ways:

1. The CDC will be calling randomly selected houses in Warwick, West Warwick, and Coventry where students live to ask parents to participate in a telephone survey. Only a small proportion of student households will actually be selected.
2. The CDC will also be surveying some high school students from the schools that were closed last week.

The purpose of these surveys is not to find out where infections may have started or to whom or how they might have spread. We are trying to learn what kinds of things students did and places they went in order to learn about how people respond when schools are closed. We also want to know how school closure affected families. Individual's participation will be very helpful to the community as it makes future plans to keep people safe and healthy.

People with questions about either of these surveys should call the HEALTH Family Health Information Line at 1-800-942-7434.