Based on a literature and government document review, a detailed methodological approach for research framework and questionnaire development was followed to inform the development of this study [3] . An indicator system framework was created and questionnaire designed based on the framework. The questionnaire consists of 17 sections and 192 items. The questionnaire and the survey protocol (including field work manual and quality control procedures) were tested by a pilot study. For the purpose of this study, we analyzed the data focused on the following nine areas of interest: (1) hospi-tal's demographic data (including region, SARS crisis experience, teaching function, hospital type, and number of medical staff in related departments); (2) hospital PHE preparation (emergency plans, response initiating time, accessibility, and revision and implementation of emergency plan); (3) response to a community PHE (cooperation with local organizations, relationship with the community PHE network, medical treatment, and rescue work in the community); (4) stockpiles of drugs and materials (stockpiles of drugs and other resources and personal protective equipment); (5)PHE detection and identification (syndrome surveillance); (6) procedures for medical treatment (protocol for diagnosis, treatment, and transfer of PHE victims); (7) laboratory diagnosis and management (laboratory regulation and management system, sample disposal and evaluation system, collection and disposal of suspected samples, and diagnosis of pathogen/etiology); (8) staff training (organization of PHE training, current training of medical staff, curriculum development and training effectiveness assessment); and (9) risk communication (organization for communication of risk psychological counseling to victim and medical staff, and communication with public). Excluding aspect 1, items 2-9 (covering 88 survey questions) represent 8 types of PHE preparedness capacities. Each answered item was scored 1 for "yes" and 0 for "no" or "unknown". Item scores were calculated by adding together "yes" answers. Items scores were used as a proxy for measuring PHE preparedness in an institution. A total item score was measured by calculating the score across all 8 items. The higher the total item score, the better the hospital PHE preparedness capacity. Further analyses were conducted to understand the correlation between preparedness capacity and demographic information. The distribution of the related preparedness capacities across 10 categories of PHE [1] and 15 types of etiology was also assessed.