News
It was nice of the Blackhawks to win the cup while we were in town so we could join in the celebration!! Thanks to all who attended. Meeting notes and updates will be posted soon.
The Federal InterAgency Board's white paper, "Stress-Related Mental Health Issues in Emergency Responders, First Receivers, Disaster Workers, and Their Families" has been added to the resources page on the C-TECC website. We appreciate the work on this topic by the IAB and look forward to collaborating as we try to mitigate the psychological threat to first responders during high threat operations.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), in coordination with the Departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Sedative-drugs, and Transportation, has released “First Responder Guidance for Improving Survivability in Improvised Explosive Device and/or Active Shooter Incidents.”
The Draft Agenda for the Spring/Summer 2015 Full Committee Meeting has been released. One important update to emphasize: due to facility request, we will not be starting the meeting until 0900 instead of the earlier posted 0830.
The spring meeting will be held in the Feinberg Pavilion at Northwest Memorial Hospital (251 E. Huron St, Chicago), from 8:30am until 5pm on Monday, June 15th and from 8:30am until 2pm on Tuesday, June 16th. A specific agenda will be provided to attendees shortly before the meeting date. Most out-of-town committee members will be lodging at the Willows Hotel (www.willowshotelchicago.com). This hotel is about 20 minutes from downtown, where the meeting will be held.
The Committee requests that anyone planning to attend notify Dr. Reed Smith (C-TECC Co-Chair) at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
C-TECC is happy to announce that the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences has been awarded a $1.3 million Continuing Training Grant (CTG) from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to teach Tactical Emergency Casualty Care and escorted warm zone care to first care providers and first responders across the United States. The over-arching goal of GW’s training is to better prepare citizens and responders to provide care during events where there may be a delay in response due to operational challenges and barriers, and teach responders to work in environments that they have not traditionally worked in the past.
This is the second year in a row that TECC has been a feature of the CTG award. Last year's CTG awarded to the ALERRT training program from Texas State University included TECC training for patrol officers. In this year's award, TECC is a prominent focus of the training and is another milestone as the Committee works to solidify TECC as the civilian standard for high threat medical response.
For more information on this year's award, contact C-TECC Executive Committee member Geoff Shapiro at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or read more on the grant at http://smhs.gwu.edu/news/gw-awarded-13-million-train-first-responders-medical-readiness-and-immediate-victim-care-during
The Chairmen of C-TECC are proud to announce that the Koshka Foundation for Safe Schools has accepted a liaison seat on the Board of Advisors, and that Kristina Anderson, the Executive Director of the Koshka Foundation, will be personally joining the Board of Advisors.
From the website www.KoshkaFoundation.org:
Founded after the school tragedy of Virginia Tech on April 16, 2007, the Koshka Foundation was started to ensure the memory of April 16th is continued in meaningful ways.Dedicated towards impacting school safety and student education initiatives, our vision is a world that strongly believes in the power of youth and awareness as the greatest assets to a safer future.
Often, as first responders, we get focused on the tactics and details of the high risk operations in which we respond, potentially losing sight of the fact that at the other end of the operation is a young girl whose biggest decision of the day was which shoes to wear to class. Our work and preparation for high threat medical response must account for their stories as well.
Ms. Anderson is a compelling and powerful speaker with a story of survival that should be heard by all. Our hope is that this liaison with the Koshka Foundation, as well as the honor of having Kristina at the table with us, will allow the voice of the survivors, as well as those lost, to be an integral part of our process.
The Board of Directors would like to thank you all for a very successful 2014 as well as an incredibly productive winter 2014 full committee meeting!
To recap for those of you who could not attend, the meeting at SOMA this year was extremely well attended, both by our members as well as many conference attendees. The support from SOMA this year was fantastic as always, as demonstrated by how easy it was to expand our room for 325 seats to 150 seats. Thank you again to the administration and directors for the SOMA scientific assembly.