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Organization Spotlight - Spring 2008

The American Medical Association Center for Public Health Preparedness and Disaster Response

The American Medical Association (AMA) was founded in 1847 to promote the art and science of medicine and support the betterment of public health. The AMA now comprises 110 specialty organizations, 54 state and territorial medical societies, 3 additional national medical associations, 5 uniformed services, more than 400 county medical societies, and approximately 240,000 individual physician members.

Within the AMA, the Center for Public Health Preparedness & Disaster Response (CPHPDR) has been established to support the disaster response community through several educational and research initiatives. In conjunction with the National Disaster Life Support Foundation, the Center is committed to the provision of timely training programs to better prepare health care professionals and emergency response personnel for mass casualty events. In addition, the Center is also home to Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness (www.dmphp.org), the first comprehensive and authoritative journal emphasizing public health preparedness and disaster response for all health care and public health professionals. We hope that interested individuals will visit our website at http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/6206.html to learn more about CPHPDR's activities and offerings.

At this time, AMA Center for Public Health Preparedness & Disaster Response would like to reach out to the Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) community in the interest of partnering with your organization's volunteer professionals who play such an important role within the disaster community. First, our Center is honored to offer our free online Electronic Core Disaster Life Support(TM) (eCDLS) training course to members of the Medical Reserve Corps. We hope that all interested MRC members will take the opportunity to complete this course and then asist our organization by applying their unique expertise to provide suggestions for potential eCDLS course improvements. This course can be accessed directly at http://train.ncbrt.lsu.edu/sign_in.k2.

In addition, the staff of the Center for Public Health Preparedness & Disaster Response would like to further engage members of the MRC in educational dialogue via the Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness journal. Our Journal will now be including dedicated coverage of MRC activities within each issue beginning December 2008. Our Journal further encourages MRC members to help us to serve as a voice for all members of the disaster community by submitting your original research articles, commentaries, and editorials for publication. To acknowledge the support of the MRC membership, we would like to offer a subscription to Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness for all Medical Reserve Corps members at the special rate, which reflects the same discount that we are able to offer to our own American Medical Association members.

The AMA Center for Public Health Preparedness & Disaster Response is grateful for the opportunity to support and represent the Medical Reserve Corps. We look forward to ongoing collaborations with MRC members as our organizations work collectively to improve the provision of disaster planning and response activities within all the communities that we serve.

Last Updated on 7/8/2008