The Lawrence-Douglas County Health Department is creating a “medical reserve corps” of volunteers to support hospitals and ambulance crews in case of a health emergency.

“If we had to do smallpox vaccinations for the entire county, we don’t have that (personnel availability) in place,” said Charlotte Marthaler, director of policy and planning for the Health Department.

The new corps, she said, “allows for that surge capacity. You can identify the folks in the community who are willing to participate in an emergency, have them organized and have them trained. You don’t have to wait for the event and say, ‘Oops, I need these folks.'”

Douglas County was one of three health departments in Kansas to receive $50,000 federal grants in 2003 to start such a corps. The federal government began creating them in 2002 in response to the Sept. 11 attacks.

Such a program already has started in Shawnee County. Tisha Sinclair, medical reserve corps coordinator there, said she had recruited 45 volunteers. Her goal is to have 100 volunteers. A first training session for volunteers is planned for February.

“That’s where they’re going to learn what to do to respond, how they’ll be contacted, that sort of thing,” Sinclair said. “We’ll also provide CPR, first aid training for our nonlicensed volunteers.”

Such organization and training in Douglas County will wait until a coordinator is hired, Marthaler said. Volunteers will be sought from outside the community of people now working as doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other medical jobs.

“In an emergency, they’ll be busy,” Marthaler said of medical professionals. “We need to find people who are retired, people who aren’t necessarily working in the field at the moment.”

More about the Medical Reserve Corps Medical Reserve Corps grantees

The corps also could be used for nonemergency activities, such as flu clinics and health education efforts.

“If we want to do a campaign to promote hand-washing, or whatever we might need, we can use those folks,” Marthaler said.

The $50,000 grant, from the Office of the Surgeon General, is renewable for up to three years. Shawnee County is in the second year of its grant. Sinclair said she didn’t know what would happen to her position after the grant runs out.

“It would be nice if we could find continued funding for the position, needed materials and supplies,” Sinclair said, “but we don’t know.”

Marthaler said the corps would make Douglas County more ready to respond to an emergency.

“This is a great opportunity for our community to do this organizing effort,” she said. “This is something that needed to be done.”