Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 November 2015
A health care emergency preparedness coalition (coalition) is a group of health care organizations, public safety agencies, and public health partners that join forces for the common cause of making their communities safer, healthier, and more resilient. Coalitions have been characterized as being focused on hospital systems instead of the health care of the community as a whole. We discuss 2 examples of coalition partners that use a more inclusive approach to planning, response, and recovery. The first is a large health care system spread across 23 states, and the other is a public safety agency in northeast Pennsylvania that took the lead to address the preparedness and response toward a large influx of burn patients and grew to encompass all aspects of community health care. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2015;9:712–716)