Unit Spotlight - Winter 2007

The Chatham Family Resource Center (CFRC) was officially recognized as an MRC unit in September 2003. The CFRC had been a direct service provider to needy families since 1994, and when called to assist with a 1996 outbreak of Rubella in the Hispanic Immigrants, the CFRC was well positioned to respond. The community quickly realized that better coordination between healthcare providers, employers, first responders, and volunteers was needed for surge capacity and for sustainability of response.

 

In 2001, the CFRC was funded to organize the Vaccinations for Everyone Project with a GlaxoSmithKline grant and leadership from First Lady Mary Easley. This project coordinated resources from the local health department, State Immunization Branch, Chatham Hospital, 20 employers, churches, and volunteers to provide 2,400 quick-strike MMR and Td vaccinations to mostly Hispanic immigrants. The levels of Rubella susceptibility as measured in blood titers fell in immigrant women giving birth at UNC Hospitals in coming years. This project allowed the Family Resource Center to hone community skills for quickly getting vaccinations to the public. The CFRC soon became a sponsor of AmeriCorps Vista Members who would further develop community-based disaster preparedness and response strategies, and in 2002, formed the Chatham Citizen Corps Council. It is with this experience and background in community organizing that the organization was a natural fit to organize into a MRC unit. The MRC is now a Citizen Corps Council program.

The focus of the CFRC has been whole-community preparedness for disasters. The unit provides public outreach and education to the public. The better residents can prepare themselves, use disaster plans and access resources, the better prepared the community as a whole. The MRC also has been a catalyst for better agency coordination, which leverages total resource capacities for disaster response. The MRC conducts multi-agency conferences and exercises to help clarify responsibilities among diverse first responders. Medical first responders are assessed for volunteer needs and capacities to use volunteers. The unit helps integrate the private-sector employers, nonprofit organizations, and volunteers into the disaster response plans. The unit coordinates with the health department, hospital, EOC, and EMS to train volunteers and adapt medical provider operations to accommodate volunteers.

 

 

The CFRC MRC has 68 volunteers, including nurses, doctors, EMTs, psychologists, social workers, educators, emergency management personnel, law enforcement, local hospital and health department workers, and interpreters. 

 

In 2007, the CFRC secured both Office of Rural Health and Healthy Vision Funding to coordinate resources of the health department, hospital, Community Health Center, Lion’s Club, volunteers, and industrial plants to provide blood pressure, diabetes, and vision screenings to 2,000 largely underserved individuals of the community. MRC volunteers and VISTA Members participated in a day-long Pandemic Flu Exercise conducted by the health department. The MRC unit has been the lead in planning an Are You Ready? Fair for late April. The unit  also is coordinating a county-wide Vial of Life program implementation for the Citizen Corps Council.

 

In 2006, the CFRC MRC participated in the JCAHO Disaster Preparedness Drill with Chatham Hospital. The unit served on the health department Disaster Management Committee to help create the local Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) plan and define the roles of the volunteers. The MRC unit participated in an SNS health department exercise and provided volunteer assistance in the form of interpreters and “patients.” The MRC conducted an Emergency Sheltering Conference with local DSS, the Council on Aging, the EOC, and local law enforcement on volunteers in shelter operations. The unit organized and conducted four multi-agency conferences for volunteers in 2006. 

 

During the 2005 response to Hurricane Katrina, the CFRC MRC coordinated with the American Red Cross and facilitated training of volunteers for emergency sheltering. Thirty MRC volunteers were trained to assist in shelters.

 

The MRC holds a periodic orientation of volunteers with training provided through conferences. The unit holds five to six conferences each year with each one having a different focus such as Pandemic Flu, SNS distribution, hurricane preparation, or sheltering. The conferences include speakers with subject matter expertise and conclude with a table-top exercise. The CFRC MRC provides outreach and education to the public through places of employment, the media, schools, fairs, and door-to-door visits that include the immigrant community neighborhoods.

 

 

The largest obstacle to overcome has been that more than 50 percent of the community served by the CFRC MRC speaks only Spanish, thus making it difficult to educate all of the public on how to access the emergency response infrastructure and prepare for a disaster. As a result, the MRC developed the Interpreter Corps to promote awareness and communicate with the Spanish-speaking population during an exercise or a disaster. The unit  also has coordinated multi-agency emergency preparedness exercises that focus on assessing and improving barriers to communication.

 

In addition, the community where the CFRC is located is medically underserved. Therefore, the unit has designed strategies to reach out to the other side of the county to active and retired health professionals to have a larger pool of volunteers. The unit also has reached out to lower income and immigrant populations to have them participate and learn to prepare for a response.