Volunteer Recruitment

Massive Volunteer Recruitment Underway at Health Department as Fairfax County Prepares for Public Health Emergencies

September 8, 2004

The Fairfax County Health Department is launching a major volunteer recruitment drive to staff the Fairfax Medical Reserve Corps (MRC), a program of the Fairfax County Citizen Corps. More than 13,000 medical and non-medical volunteers are needed to respond to a full scale public health emergency in Fairfax County.

"Our goal is to have a trained volunteer force ready to help us respond to a public health emergency affecting Fairfax County and the cities of Fairfax and Falls Church," said Gloria Addo-Ayensu, M.D., M.P.H., health director.

In the event of a bioterrorism attack or a naturally occurring epidemic, MRC volunteers would be called upon to staff vaccination or medication dispensing sites. In a worst case scenario, this could mean providing for all residents in Fairfax County - more than 1 million people - in three to five days. To accomplish this, 96 teams, comprising 142 people per team, would staff dispensing sites at all county public high schools and George Mason University.

"During the upcoming fall season, we hope to recruit enough experienced and committed volunteers to fill leadership positions critical to the operation of each dispensing site, such as incident coordinators, team leaders, volunteer coordinators and safety officers." The Fairfax MRC also needs volunteer physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, nurses, pharmacists, mental health professionals.

In addition, a large number of non-medical volunteers are needed to provide general support, such as assisting patients with forms, and performing data entry and other administrative tasks. "While the name of our program is the Medical Reserve Corps, we clearly need non-medical volunteers to provide critical support," said Donna Foster, Fairfax MRC coordinator.

To develop Fairfax County's public health dispensing site plan, the Health Department has been working with a task force of community physicians and other Fairfax County agencies since spring 2002. A Web-based registration and alerting system has been developed to support the MRC program. In October 2003, the Health Department tested its plan by staging a mock smallpox vaccination dispensing exercise at Marshall High School in Falls Church.

Foster is available for presentations about the Health Department's emergency response plan or the Medical Reserve Corps. For a presentation or to volunteer, contact Foster at 703-246-2485, TTY 703-591-6435. For more information about the Fairfax County Citizen Corps please visit their web site.