Commissioned Corps Response Teams

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RDF Capabilities:

• Mass care (primary care, mental health, and public health services for the sheltered population) (May include staffing a Federal Medical Station)
• Point of Distribution (POD) Operation (mass prophylaxis and vaccination)
• Medical surge
• Isolation and quarantine
• Pre-hospital triage and treatment
• Community outreach and assessment
• Humanitarian assistance
• On-site incident management
• Medical supplies management and distribution
• Public health needs assessment and epidemiological investigations
• Worker health and safety
• Animal health emergency support

RDF Personnel:

Command Staff

Clinical Staff

Public Health Staff

Total Strength: 105

IRCT Responsibilities:

• Represent ESF #8 in the Field
• Perform Liaison Functions required of ESF #8
• Perform leadership functions for ESF #8 deployed resources
• Operations responsibility for ESF #8
• Administration and Finance
• Logistics
• IT/Communications
• Planning

IRCT Personnel:

Applied Public Health Team Responsibilities:

• An Applied Public Health Team will be integrated into the Commissioned Corps’ response at any given point in time, as required by Federal, Tribal, state, or local requests for assistance; or via an international mission request. The APHTs will be composed of experts in public health assessments, environmental health, infrastructure integrity, food safety, vector control, epidemiology, and surveillance. Previous experience in disaster response activities has revealed a significant need for the skill sets listed above when responding to complex disasters.
• These APHTs can be described as a “Public Health Department in a Box”, as they represent most of the required skills for carrying out those functions.

APHT Personnel:

APHT Structure:

The APHTs will be arranged into the following sub-specialty units:

• Command Staff
• Support
• Water/Waste Water
• Food Safety
• Animal and Vector Control
• Disease Surveillance
• Occupational Safety
• Preventive Medicine
• Community Health Education

Mental Health Team Capabilities:

• Incident assessment including scope and intensity of event and exposure to trauma,
• Collaborating with local officials and professional groups to assess community mental health prevention and treatment needs,
• Providing system-level consultation and support to develop behavioral health training programs for impacted populations (e.g., the Mercy Model)
• Identifying and referring survivors and responders to needed community services
• Screening and assessment of individuals for a variety of conditions including suicide risk, acute and chronic stress reactions, substance abuse, and mental health disorders,
• Utilizing specialized counseling approaches including suicide prevention and intervention with grief counseling,
• Time-limited counseling or psychotherapy to individuals with serious mental illness and/or substance abuse disorders until local resources return to basic functioning,
• Providing consultation to medical staff on the effects of stress on patient behavior,
• Psychological first aid, including crisis intervention to address mental and emotional needs of survivors and responders following a disaster,
• Consulting on-site incident commanders in the prevention and management of stress including site conditions and work hours to ensure continued mission readiness of responders,
• Providing stress management and counseling services including exit interviews to support responders, and
• Providing assessment, diagnosis, and treatment of persons requiring more intensive psychological interventions, including psychopharmacology consultation through a psych-pharmacy specialist referral when required.

Mental Health Team Personnel:

Mental Health Team (MHT) Structure:

Mental Health Teams will be composed of three types of officers: Team leaders, Mental Health Providers, and Incident Stress Team Members. Officers will be assigned these responsibilities consistent with licensure, training, and experience.

• Mental Health Providers are officers who maintain clinical currency and are licensed as independent practitioners of behavioral health care within the following disciplines: social work, psychology, and psychiatry.
• Team Leaders are Mental Health Providers who have experience as deployed mental health responders, and have received a basic level of training as a stress responder, and field leadership training.  To accommodate probable missions that will involve small numbers of providers, the MHT will have both a Team Leader and a Deputy.
• Incident Stress Team Members will be those officers who have incident stress management skills, but do not meet the requirements of the Mental Health Providers.  Officers who are licensed independent practitioners but have not maintained currency may fit into this category.  Incident Stress Team Members will also include Occupational Therapists, Psychiatric Nurses, and other skilled categories that do not have independent practice licenses for the provision of mental health.  These individuals will not be deployed in a mental health role unless accompanied by a Mental Health Provider.

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This page was last modified: 10/02/2006 04:22 PM