TIIDE'S Role in Blast Injury Education

Few civilian health care providers in the United States have experience treating casualties with injuries from blasts. Currently, there is an urgent need to develop, disseminate, and exchange information about injuries caused by terrorism. TIIDE was established through a CDC Cooperative Agreement to meet this demand.

The TIIDE Project is constructed around three interrelated areas that work to minimize the health consequences of terrorism and other public health emergencies:

  • Lessons learned from terrorist events : Certain problematic themes are recurrent in mass casualty responses such as controlled dispatch, bystander and mutual aid response and communications. To explore these themes, CDC and TIIDE partners convened meetings from 2005 to 2010 to provide a forum for individuals and organizations with experience in the management of terrorist explosions to share their insight with key acute care and public health organizations in the U.S.
  • Partnerships : Partners enhance CDC's ability to coordinate with the emergency care community and to ensure that critical information is accessible to a broad spectrum of health care providers and organizations. Partnerships also provide an avenue and platform for disseminating the information gained through Lessons Learned from Terrorist Events
  • Dissemination – Through Lessons Learned from Terrorist Events, CDC and TIIDE Partners will determine the most appropriate method for disseminating and exchanging information before, during and after a terrorist bombing. TIIDE will also promote the use of the appropriate methods of communications—electronic mail, fax, telephone or other methods—to convey information to the emergency care community and to public health partners on issues related to injuries from terrorist attacks or other explosions.

Blast Injury Information Dissemination

The TIIDE Partnership and CDC, under the leadership of ATS, have developed fact sheets on blast injury diagnoses and management. Links to these fact sheets as they appear on the CDC TIIDE website are listed below:

These fact sheets address background, clinical presentation, diagnostic evaluation, management and disposition of blast injury topics. The fact sheets may be viewed and downloaded for use in the treatment of blast injury patients, in the training of clinical staff or to disseminate to others. These fact sheets are available in Spanish, Chinese, and French. These fact sheets have been sent to hospitals in the United States and across the world after terrorist bombings and other explosions.

Clinical Monograph

The factual bases for the above fact sheets are papers written by experts and compiled into a Clinical Monograph: Blast Injuries and Their Treatment, again under ATS leadership. A link to the monograph is located under our Resources Tab.