In Focus | Pandemics

In times of pandemics like the coronavirus which causes COVID-19, emergency and disaster managers have one overarching task: to keep society functioning, regardless of the challenge. “Emergency management, as a profession, has been working very, very closely with the public health community for decades in anticipation of just a disease and outbreak like this,” says Tim Manning, Director of Washington Operations for the Pacific Disaster Center. Here, Manning talks with Tim Frazier, Ph.D., Faculty Director of Georgetown University’s Master's in Emergency & Disaster Management graduate programs, about how these professionals coordinate emergency response and help communicate to the public that “we are all in this together.”