The COVID-19 Pandemic, Fukushima Nuclear Disaster, and Commonalities and Public Health Threat Complexities: A Public Health, Healthcare, and Emergency Management Command and Support Supersystem Model

This article is a 12-year retrospective of the Fukushima nuclear disaster with a 7-year revisitation of our publication, "Implications of the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: Man-Made Hazards, Vulnerability Factors, and Risk to Environmental Health" (Eddy & Sase, 2015). We shed light on early and erroneous assumptions made about the global environmental health impact, as well as follow up on prolonged site remediation diOculties and controversial scheduled discharges of containerized wastewater. As we developed a refreshed vision of the triple nuclear reactor meltdown, we incorporated lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic that resulted in a novel and universally applicable Public Health, Healthcare, and Emergency Management Command and Support Supersystem Model. The model addresses all-hazards readiness needs, which is a core component of U.S. Department of Health and Human Services/Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, U.S. Department of Homeland Security/Federal Emergency Management Agency, and U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) guidelines and law. The model and associated narrative is intended to guide future global and international public health threat planning and response and provide a decision support tool for state and local public health, emergency management, and homeland security practitioners. The model integrates core aspects of U.S. emergency preparedness and response federal doctrine and CMS regulations-representing multiple agencies, professions, and healthcare facility guidelines-with an integrated foundation of practical concepts from One Health, public health, and all-hazards approaches. Although internationally coordinated public health threat prevention and containment is the primary point of emphasis, our model can be applied at all jurisdictional levels.