Enhancing medical and public health capabilities during times of crisis.

Terrorist attacks and other catastrophic events will create demands that severely challenge the capacity of the medical/public health system. To meet the surge, a cadre of professionals should be trained to operate around the nucleus of medical/public health officials. At New York University, an inter-institutional team is considering specific roles for and an approach to training dentists to enable these health care professionals to supplement medical/public surge needs based upon informatics systems that provide critical information.