Decision Theater tests pandemic flu plans

Global health crises are nothing ASU health officials haven't seen before.

The influenza outbreaks they've experienced previously spread digitally across the screens that cover Decision Theater's walls.

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There is nothing virtual about swine flu, the virus strain that has killed more than 100 people in Mexico and has infected dozens of others worldwide. But Arizona State University has hosted electronic simulations of an influenza pandemic the past two years to help ready state and local agencies for a real outbreak.

"We've run through this already, so we're very well prepared, which is kinda cool," said Dr. Allan Markus, director of ASU's Campus Health Services. To date, no cases of swine flu have been reported at the university or anywhere else in the state.

Using its Decision Theater, ASU has assisted the state Department of Health Services, Maricopa County and multiple local school districts in crafting their planned response to a deadly flu strain.

The theater is little more than a viewing room, with comfortable seats surrounded by floor-to-ceiling monitors. That is, until its computers and projection system power on, flooding the room's walls with charts, graphics, video, and sometimes 3-D visuals.

As part of the theater's pandemic flu simulation, fake cable news reports detail the disease's spread on one screen as the World Health Organization raises its threat level on another. Government officials that have participated in the test runs are asked how their emergency plan calls on them to respond at each stage in the crisis.

"We create artificial environments to help people think through these issues," said George Basile, Decision Theater's executive director.

Agency officials must make a huge volume of quick decisions during a health crisis. Basile said the goal for ASU is to make sure the crisis isn't the first time officials have considered their response to specific situations.

Tim Lant, the theater's research director, said he uses data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies to construct mathematical models that predict how an outbreak of bird flu might spur a crisis.

What should a school district tell concerned parents? At what point in the disease's spread should schools close? "Those kinds of decisions are the reason why you want to run the exercise," Lant said.

Right now, with swine flu cases multiplying exponentially, ASU researchers and the theater are working to track the disease. Lant said he is watching everything from government agency releases to the number of Google searches for "swine flu."

ASU's simulated pandemic involves a strain that the medical community understands far better than it does the swine flu, which has proven fatal in Mexico City but mild elsewhere.

"We do not have great evidence in the U.S. that this causes the severe mortality that the bird flu does," Markus said.

While details about the disease remain elusive, Basile said all the planning has brought government agencies closer together.

"We're actually seeing an encouraging amount of cooperation," Basile said. "It's really quite positive, the response."