What is the Medical Reserve Corps (MRC)?
The MRC is a team of pre-identified, trained and credentialed volunteers who augment local community health and medical services during disasters and other public health activities. These volunteers include physicians, nurses, dentists, veterinarians, pharmacists, other health and medical professionals, as well as others who are willing to support the MRC.  There are over 900 MRC units nationwide.

 

The NFMRC is regional and serves the following eight (8) counties in North Florida:
    Franklin
    Gadsden
    Jefferson
    Leon
    Liberty
    Madison
    Taylor
    Wakulla
 
NFMRC volunteers will be activated during natural disaster or man-made emergency events including hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, bio-terrorism, pandemic flu or other communicable disease outbreaks. The mission of the NFMRC is to bring together medical volunteers to respond and meet the health services needs of disaster survivors during the response and recovery phases of any emergency event.

What do MRC Volunteers do?
Major emergencies can overwhelm the capabilities of first responders, particularly during the first 12 to 72 hours.  Medical and other health volunteers can provide an important “surge” capacity during this critical period.  They can also augment medical staff shortages at local medical and emergency facilities.  In short, communities often need medically trained individuals to fill in the gaps in their emergency response plans.  Overall, this will help to improve the community’s response capabilities.

MRC volunteers also strengthen the overall health of Americans by participating in general public health initiatives, such as flu vaccination clinics and diabetes detection programs.  With an overarching goal to improve health literacy, the U.S. Surgeon General encourages MRC volunteers to work toward increasing disease and injury prevention, eliminating health disparities, and improving public health preparedness.

For more information, contact Denise Imbler, Coordinator at DImbler@thearpc.com or (850) 488-6211, extension 101