Engaging Stakeholders at Every Opportunity: The Experience of the Emergency Law Inventory.

Engaging directly with stakeholders in the emergency preparedness and response volunteer workforce is the best way to ensure that informational resources reflect their needs and preferences. Freeman et al. present a framework for stakeholder engagement that favors a collaborative approach. In this framework, the activities (i.e., examining stakeholder relations, communicating with stakeholders, and learning with stakeholders) result in integrative stakeholder engagement. Furthermore, stakeholder engagement is expected to promote innovation and sustainability, and it is conceptualized to be especially successful if those with the least power in a system are able to participate. In the field of disaster planning, stakeholder engagement has been used to validate themes and identify knowledge gaps and has been shown to promote resilience. Here, we use the Freeman framework to describe the collaborative process of obtaining stakeholder input and the resultant value of this input for the Emergency Law Inventory (ELI). (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print September 27, 2018: e1-e2. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2018.304615).