Eric Cote speaks at the 2023 Public Health Preparedness Summit in Atlanta, GA where he and his colleagues from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) introduced the groundbreaking Power Outage Partners initiative, launched with the Louisiana Department of Health with CDC funding and technical support from ASTHO.
Powered for Patients project director Eric Cote joined clients from the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO) at the 2023 Public Health Preparedness Summit in Atlanta recently to introduce an ASTHO Toolkit that will help jurisdictions launch initiatives to boost power outage support for in-home life support users.
The Toolkit chronicles Power Outage Partners, an initiative launched in 2021 with the Louisiana Department of Health (LDH) to provide in-home life support users with additional batteries to extend device runtime during power outages. The project received funding and technical assistance from the CDC and ASTHO. P4P project director Eric Cote developed the initial concept for the initiative and was hired by ASTHO to serve as the project consultant, a role that involved working with LDH officials to develop and launch an operational plan for the initiative. Cote also authored ASTHO’s recently published Toolkit.
“Helping to develop Power Outage Partners from a concept to a groundbreaking new program that provides unprecedented support to life support users has been extremely rewarding,” said Cote. “I’m grateful to ASTHO and the Louisiana Department of Health for seeing the promise of Power Outage Partners in fundamentally changing the way jurisdictions can support their most at-risk citizens during power outages.”
Cote also thanked the DME suppliers working with him to sustain Power Outage Partners after the initial funding from the CDC and ASTHO was exhausted. Access Respiratory, a Quipt Home Medical company, Breathing Care, and VieMed, three leading DME suppliers in Louisiana, have partnered with Cote to support the initiative. The three companies will dedicate a portion of their revenue from the sale of batteries to invasively ventilated Louisianans to support the program in Louisiana and help spur its expansion to other states.
As of November 2023, Cote was working with LDH officials on final preparations for a program launch in January 2024. Cote is also working with other jurisdictions interested in following Louisiana’s lead.