Developing an Emergency Action Plan (EPOA) for The Graduate School at Augusta University

Over the past five years, The Graduate School (TGS) at Augusta University (AU) has encountered several significant adverse events, highlighting the need for an effective emergency response framework. Among these events, the COVID-19 pandemic and most recently, Hurricane Helene have been transformative in shaping our understanding of emergency preparedness and response. The unprecedented challenges posed by these events revealed several opportunities for emergency preparedness improvement, particularly in how TGS can better serve its faculty and trainees during crises. Since Hurricane Helene, TGS has embarked on the development of an official Emergency Plan of Action (EPOA) aimed at enhancing its responsiveness to unexpected instruction disruptions. The main goal of this initiative is to create a structured and efficient response mechanism that addresses the immediate and long-term needs of trainees and faculty during an emergency. The primary objective of this study involves identification and evaluation of established emergency responses at all of AU’s campuses and at comparable peer institutions. By analyzing responses to various categories of emergencies—including natural disasters, man-made crises, and public health emergencies—TGS aims to create an EPOA that leads to better outcomes for the academic community. We hypothesize having an EPOA response in place will lead to better outcomes for trainees and faculty when disruptions occur. Peer-reviewed literature was reviewed to gather existing knowledge on effective emergency response strategies within academic communities. Additionally, we performed qualitative interviews with administrators from peer institutions noted for their effective emergency management practices. These conversations provided insights into EPOAs that have proven to be successful. Furthermore, we conducted surveys targeting trainees and faculty at AU. These surveys aimed to measure current levels of emergency-related well-being, identify specific needs of TGS trainees and faculty, and highlight any areas of improvement. The findings from the surveys and peer institution feedback informed the drafting of an EPOA for TGS which will be revised and assessed bi-annually for relevance and effectiveness. This abstract was presented at the American Physiology Summit 2025 and is only available in HTML format. There is no downloadable file or PDF version. The Physiology editorial board was not involved in the peer review process.