The pioneering work that started with the Louisiana Department of Health pilot will likely inspire other jurisdictions to step up power outage support for life support and DME users.  ASTHO’s Toolkit, Advancing Preparedness for Life Support Users During Power Outages, showcases Louisiana’s Power Outage Partners initiative, and details other steps jurisdictions can consider to boost power outage support for their most vulnerable citizens. The toolkit details three levels of potential activities, including:

• Level 1 – Basic Impactful Activities
• Level 2 – Significant Activities with Increasing Impact
• Level 3 – Major Activities with Far Reaching Impact

The toolkit also offers practical tools to enable jurisdictions to lead their own initiatives, including calculators to project costs for supplying external batteries to ventilated citizens, and other resources to help jurisdictions estimate the personnel resources needed for different activities. Jurisdictions can use the toolkit to guide their initiative but they can also enlist support from the architect of Power Outage Partners, and the author of ASTHO’s toolkit, Eric Cote.