COMMANDER'S CORNER

David Lipin - Unit Commander

Hello everyone, and happy new year! We’ve got quite an active year planned, and we’re kicking it off in earnest. Plenty of details to read about in this edition!

March Meeting Visitor
To start with, we will have a guest from headquarters at our March 10^th meeting. Tim Walton, NDMS Executive Officer, has asked to meet the team, give a presentation about the overall NDMS program, and to answer questions from the general membership.  This is a great opportunity to get a headquarters perspective! I strongly encourage everyone to attend. We will slightly alter our regular format for the day to facilitate this, and all members and guests are welcome to attend.

2011 Distinguished Member of Year
Congratulations to Kathy Burgardt as our 2011 Distinguished Member of the Year! Last year, Kathy did a fantastic job moving our Plans Section forward, by taking a much more significant role in on-call rostering and our training program, as well as helping out with administrative tasks like payroll, minutes for meetings, etc. Not to mention the significant task of publishing The CA-6 Chronicles every month -- arm-twisting articles from contributors, editing, and posting by the first of each month. So please congratulate Kathy when you see her next!

Health & Fitness
2012 brings a renewed focus on health and fitness. CA-6 has always had a progressive attitude towards the health and safety of its team members, and many times has set an example for other teams and the national program to follow.

This year NDMS will be rolling out a new standard for health screening. It will come as no surprise to CA-6 members, because we’ve had a similar program in place for over a decade now. The new program will be an online submission called Responder Health Survey, where each individual can log onto the website and complete or update their form whenever their health status changes. Each team’s Medical Director staff will review the submissions and assign each person a Tier rating:

• Tier 1: deployable without limitations
• Tier 2: deployable with specific limitations (e.g., heat/cold, exertion, altitude, lifting)
• Tier 3: temporarily non-deployable (e.g., late-term pregnancy, recent surgery, recovering from injury)

Tier 2 people require a medical review/approval to deploy (based on the specific deployment conditions at the time), and Tier 3 people cannot deploy. There is a regional and headquarters review and appeal process as well.

CA-6 is expecting to implement this process in the coming month or two. It will completely replace our existing program, so everyone will be required to complete the new online health form. Stay tuned for more on this.

Related to this, we are starting to implement a fitness program. It’s voluntary to start, but we anticipate that we will begin to see remediation requirements as health data comes in from the new overall health program. Just as fire and police departments across the country are slowly adopting fitness standards, we see this as not only inevitable in NDMS but also the right thing to do – we put ourselves in austere, sometimes extreme situations, and an injury or illness can jeopardize an individual, the team (who has to care for and take up the slack for an incapacitated individual), and our mission. So I strongly encourage you to start thinking about your health and fitness as an integral part of your commitment not only to NDMS but to your fellow teammates (and need I mention family and friends?).