Just when you’d hope health care is safe—it is not. The public knows it, too. Some 62 percent say they are afraid something bad will happen to them if they have to go into the hospital. The data on medical errors and hospital infection rates says they certainly know what they’re talking about.

But there is more to medical and health safety than just that. Some of the greatest threats do not come from inside the system—they come from outside the system.

Just consider—lettuce comes tossed with e-coli. Toothpaste can be toxic. Many experts believe a pandemic of avian flu is no longer a matter of "if" but of "when." And you could not make up the story about that unfortunate young man flying between continents and countries despite being infected with drug-resistant TB. How many were put at risk? Hundreds? Thousands? We will not know the full extent of the consequences for years to come.

If we’ve learned anything these past few years, it is that disaster—whether natural, viral or man-made—can strike any of us anywhere at anytime.

If you think we are ready, I am here to tell you we are not.

Katrina awakened the country to a harsh truth that the public health field struggles with everyday. Protections that the public has always assumed were keeping us safe may not be up to the task—or missing altogether.

This is not perceived reality; it is exposed reality. As a society, we struggle with it in great discomfort. Now we know. No one has got our backs like we thought they did.

Truth is—it could be any of us and our families out on the rooftops the next time—so long as we hang on to the notion that some vaguely defined "they" are going to take care of us.

The buzz word is "connectedness." As a result of what I saw after Katrina and learned from our grantees, I have become one of its most passionate preachers. Whether it is New Orleans two years ago, or Greensburg, Kansas, earlier this summer, or Philadelphia next winter—it is up to us to take care of our own, to be ready in advance.

We can not afford to rely on food and water that is not there. Or a National Guard that is half way around the world. Or someone else’s mixed up priorities. Or distant bureaucracies that do not even know you are on the map and in the matrix.

Remember the "Icegate" scandal right after Katrina? FEMA paid truck drivers $800 a day to haul ice from Long Island to Alabama to cold storage in Maine because no one could figure out how to get it to the people who needed it. In fact, they could not even find the people who needed it!

It does not have to be this way. After all we have been through in this country, we ought to know by now what we need to do, the connections we need to make.

"Connectedness" means that the entire community—public and private—comes together before disaster strikes. Business, government, public health, hospitals, emergency medical services, social services, community organizations, neighbors, families—everyone.

And get this—for the first time, really—preparedness is premised more on what citizens and patients need and not just on what agencies traditionally deliver. I call it "preparedness of, by and for the people." This is "people-centered preparedness." It is the public health dimension of patient-centered health care. In today’s treacherous world, one must be connected to the other. They are not simply players on the same team. They are the team.

And we can not just leave it up to government and politicians to make the connections for us. Don’t forget, bad policy, political neglect and just plain inter-agency pettiness are big causes for how we got so disconnected in the first place. Government can’t influence itself. It takes people to do that. Along with all the experts and so-called "providers," real people and real patients need to be part of preparedness by both public health and health care systems.

Consider this: The definition of community is a body of people, aware that they share common unifying traits . . . connected by common interests . . . who, though different individually, interact with one another, in common.

It is true, you know, that the whole is indeed better than the sum of its parts. But without those parts—there is nothing at all. Community + Compassion + Connection. Add them up together and that is when we will come up the sum of everything we need.