The University of Arizona Teams Up with New Mexico to Train
Thousands of Healthcare Professionals to Respond to Bioterrorism

October 19, 2005
Contact: Jo Marie Gellerman, (520) 626-7219

The Arizona Emergency Medicine Research Center (AEMRC) at The University of Arizona, in collaboration with the University of New Mexico, is poised to train nearly 40,000 healthcare providers in bioterrorism emergency response tactics thanks to a recently funded three year $4.46 million federal grant. Led by efforts from the AEMRC and Center for Disaster Medicine at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, healthcare educators from across Arizona and New Mexico have joined forces as part of the Critical Response and Emergency Systems Training (CREST) Consortium. The Consortium aims to equip healthcare professionals in these states to deal with the medical consequences related to bioterrorism and other public health emergencies.

For each of three years, 13,000 healthcare professionals will be trained through CREST Consortium courses to meet the four Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) bioterrorism training goals of incident recognition, patient treatment, response coordination, and public health system notification. Training will be delivered through a combination of formal presentations, distributive learning materials, distance learning opportunities, and emergency response drills and exercises.

Funded under HRSA’s Bioterrorism Training and Curriculum Development Program (BTCDP), the grant is designed to develop a healthcare workforce that can recognize indications of a terrorist event and treat patients and communities in a safe and appropriate manner, says the grant’s principal investigator Benson Munger, PhD, research associate professor, UA Department of Emergency Medicine, and associate director of AEMRC.

“Expansion of this program to include Arizona will add additional educational courses, including the Advanced Hazmat Life Support™ (AHLS™) course developed at the UA, and will demonstrate the practicality of extending an existing educational programs into another state,” says Frank Walter, MD, grant medical director and chief of the Division of Medical Toxicology at the UA Department of Emergency Medicine.

“This is an excellent example of focusing quality training offered by AEMRC and the University of New Mexico into a collaborative effort,” said Harvey Meislin, MD, director of AEMRC and head of the UA Department of Emergency Medicine.

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Established by the Arizona Board of Regents in 1990, AEMRC is a Center of Excellence at the University of Arizona College of Medicine. AEMRC's mission is the advancement of research, education and training in emergency medicine.

Susan Guthrie
Senior Public Affairs Coordinator
University of Arizona, College of Medicine - Phoenix
4001 N. Third Street, Suite 401
Phoenix, Arizona 85012
602-631-6555 (office) 480-241-7738 (cell)
sguthrie@email.arizona.edu

To read about the expansion of the UA College of Medicine in Phoenix go to http://www.phoenix.medicine.arizona.edu/About/News/Campus/