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HIGHER EDUCATION
The Higher Education project seeks to foster awareness and interest in homeland security and disaster preparedness and response through the training of the next generation of professionals in the field. Specifically, this project is responsible for the development of curricula with a focus on homeland security and disaster preparedness, as well as the design and administration of the PACER Scholars Program for undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral students.

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  UNDERSERVED POPULATIONS PROJECT
  The Underserved Populations Project has the goal of increasing the involvement of grassroots organizations and other entities involved with critical event preparedness activities targeted to assist underserved populations in times of crisis. To accomplish this goal, the project will, in part, assess community organization’s capacity to deliver preparedness related information to the underserved via the conduct of a qualitative field study.
  
  
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  SITUATIONAL AWARENESS & DECISION MAKING
  This project will make use of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory Warfare Analysis Laboratory (WAL) facility to identify factors which influence decisions makers. By applying the fundamentals of the WAL Exercise (WALEX) process to disaster management, PACER researchers hope to identify and understand key components of the interaction between the various Federal, State, and Local leaders brought together in a disaster.
  
  
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  POLICY, ETHICS, & LAW
  PACER Principal Investigator Dr. Stephen Teret and fellow investigators James Hodge and Jon Vernick have been working to assemble a body of regulatory work and conduct a gap analysis related to legal aspects of preparedness. One of the first pieces of legislation reviewed by this team is the recent Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act (PAHPA.)