Five years after Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Gulf Coast, I was honored to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new Jackson County Health Department building in Pascagoula, Mississippi, that replaces the facility destroyed by Katrina. At the ceremony, County Health Director Dr. Travnicek reminisced about receiving my call offering help a few days after Katrina. What he needed most, he said, was two modular health facilities, at a cost of $1 million. Thankfully, with help from Kaiser Permanente, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and General Electric, the CDC Foundation's Emergency Preparedness and Response Fund was able to fund both buildings. As a result, teams of doctors, nurses and support staff, who previously were working from tents or mobile units, were able to conduct business from these modular health facilities with specialized spaces for exam rooms, file rooms, reception areas and offices. Five years later, it was rewarding to return yet again as staff moved into newer, larger, more permanent space. As I was leaving, a nurse stopped me to say that in the dark days following Katrina, it was comforting to know through our actions that workers along the Gulf were not forgotten.
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