Journal of Emergency Management ®
Webinar Series 
Stress and Mental Health in Emergency Management and Affiliated Professions: It’s OK to talk about it.

 May 6, 2021
1:00 PM Eastern Time (EST)


 Abstract: This 90 minute webinar will address the current state of mental wellness in the emergency management field and affiliated professions surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic and concurrent disasters. The webinar will address general and pandemic specific stressors and challenges in our profession. Finally, the webinar will delve into potential changes in how EMs and related fields manage mental health across their disciplines. A webinar overview is listed below our speakers.

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Presenters:
Eric Goralnick, MD, MS
Eric Goralnick, MD, MS serves as Medical Director of the Brigham Health Access Center and Emergency Preparedness. He is responsible for system wide efforts to prepare, mitigate, respond, and recover from disasters in addition to coordination of all outside hospital transfers to the Brigham Health system. He is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School and is a practicing Emergency Medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a Level I trauma and burn center in Boston, Massachusetts. He also serves as Medical Director of Gillette Stadium, providing medical direction for all mass gathering events including New England Patriots’ football games and concerts.
Chris E. Stout, PsyD
Dr. Chris Stout is a clinical psychologist and the Founding Director of the Center for Global Initiatives. He has held academic appointments at the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago and Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, and was an Invited Faculty at the Annual Meetings of the World Economic Forum in Davos. He also has served as a NGO Special Representative to the United Nations, is a Fellow in the American Psychological Association, past-President of the Illinois Psychological Association, and a Distinguished Practitioner in the National Academies of Practice.
Jill Raycroft, MSS, MPA, CEM, MEP
Jill Raycroft, MSS, MPA, CEM, MEP is a dedicated emergency manager with over fifteen years of experience. Her north star is to lead with empathy, equity, and integrity. She is currently the Deputy Incident Commander of the City & County of San Francisco’s (CCSF) COVID Command Center, which comprises over 1,000 disaster service workers and began as an Emergency Operations Center (EOC) in February 2020. She manages the CCSF Department of Emergency Management’s Exercise Program and has directed and helped coordinate over 145 exercises spanning all the Emergency Support Functions with local, regional, state, federal, international, private, and non-governmental organizations. Jill has participated in approximately 60 activations of the city’s EOC and was a Deputy Planning Section Chief in the Westchester County EOC following Hurricane Sandy. Jill is a Certified Emergency Manager and Master Exercise Practitioner.
Vincent B. Davis, CEM, MCP, NEMAA
Vincent B. Davis, CEM, MCP, NEMAA is an experienced crisis management and emergency management professional, specializing in design and development of corporate, public sector, and non-government comprehensive frameworks for business resilience and disaster planning. Mr. Davis's experience includes FEMA, American Red Cross, SAIC, Walgreens Co. Sony, Amazon HQ and Feeding America as well as multiple client consulting projects nationwide.
Carolyn J. Harshman, CEM
Carolyn J. Harshman, CEM is President of Emergency Planning Consultants located in San Diego, California. Since 1984, Ms. Harshman’s company has provided emergency management plans, training, and exercises to a wide range of government entities. Ms. Harshman's work in emergency management began as a hazard planner and public information officer for the County of San Diego Office of Emergency Services. Ms. Harshman holds a Master of Public Administration Degree from San Diego State University and is a Certified Emergency Manager as conferred by the International Association of Emergency Managers. She is a very active member of IAEM, presently serving as IAEM-USA First Vice President. Prior to working in the field of emergency management, Ms. Harshman enjoyed a combined 20-year career as a city, regional, and redevelopment planner for the County of San Diego, City of San Diego, and Southeastern Economic Development Corporation.
Timothy B. Erickson, MD
Dr. Timothy B. Erickson is an Harvard Humanitarian Initiative Core Faculty member with areas of expertise in humanitarian health, environmental toxicology, crisis in climate change, wastewater epidemiology, chemical/biological terrorism, and acute injuries in global conflict and disaster settings. He has active humanitarian health projects in conflict regions of Ukraine and Syria. Dr. Erickson is an emergency medicine physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA where he serves as the Vice Chair for Academic Affairs and the Division Chief of Medical Toxicology in the Mass General Brigham Department of Emergency Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Kim Guevara, MA
Kim Guevara is the Founder and CEO of Mozaik Solutions. She has 25 years’ experience in emergency management, homeland security, and development. She has provided services to all levels of government, the U.S. military, and in the private and non-profit sectors. Her executive experience includes leadership for change management/business transformation initiatives in order to comply with local, state, federal and Department of Defense regulations and to improve employee morale, talent recruitment, and retention. Kim also has significant international experience in telemedicine and humanitarian development and led initiatives and efforts in Southwest Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. Her combined experience in emergency/crisis management, health community initiatives in humanitarian crises, and organizational leadership led her to co-create the Crisis Athlete™ program. At its core, the program challenges, questions, and envisions new, more sustainable pathways for crisis leaders to think about resilience and leadership by leveraging and applying the power of neuroscience at the individual, organizational, and community levels.
Sonny S. Patel, MPH, MPhil
Sonny S. Patel, MPH, MPhil, is a Fellow at Harvard University and International Research Scholar at The University of Sydney. Patel is a Public Health and Global Health Executive who serves on advisory committees and board of directors of organizations creating positive social and community impact. Patel is a former National Institutes of Health Fogarty Global Health Scholar and has developed protocols, programs and training to build capacity and knowledge in communities worldwide - from subject matters in Public Health, Community Health, and Mental Health to specialized topics in Emergency Management, Community Resilience, and Disaster Risk Reduction. Patel was recently named in 2020 by USAID in India as one of the top DevDistruptors in Mental Health.
Webinar Overview

Brief overview and survey of the stressors in the field. 
  • Unique stressors in emergency management as a profession
  • Unique stressors to emergency managers due to this pandemic
  • Unique stressors due to concurrent disasters and pandemic

Normalize mental health challenges across all the populations engaged emergency management
  • Managing mental health for professional staff
  • Managing mental health for volunteer and laypersons
  • Perception of mental health as a sign of weakness
  • Are emergency managers psychologically wired differently to manage stressors?
  • Tending our mental health as a normal preventative health maintenance process
  • Brief discussion on support services, techniques, interventions, etc

Determining when to refer out to Mental Health professionals
  • Detection in yourself and others in your team or professional circle of additional help
  • Tools and strategies for prevention of long term destructive and harmful responses

Looking Forward: How do we change the way EMs manage mental health as a professional discipline?
  • Competitive stressors
  • Incremental change towards a larger goal

Touch on the positive. What does not kill you makes you stronger? Fiction or fact?

Lessons learned to this point managing mental health challenges in EM and related professions 

Survey of next topics that attendees would like covered in next Mental Health webinar and webinar wrap up.

(Speakers and topics subject to change without notice)
Funding for this training/webinar has been provided by The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under award number U45ES019350, in association with Nova Southeastern University.
Call for Papers
COVID-19 and Mental Health

 
   Journal of Emergency Management (JEM) is preparing a special issue addressing the mental health issues surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. JEM seeks manuscript submissions focused on the impact of COVID-19 on individuals, organizations, and first responders with a special emphasis on mental health and trauma during the global pandemic.
 
   Additionally, we seek papers that address the confounding nature of COVID-19 as it relates to other disasters faced during the pandemic and the short- and long-term mental health effects on the emergency management profession, the related disciplines and laypersons in your community.

Details:
 
   Over the past 15 months, the world has been turned upside down as we encountered COVID-19 and dealt with all the issues adjoining it. One of the biggest impacts has been on people and their mental health and their ability to deal with the constant onslaught of information and images. This pandemic struck quickly and left much of the world rocking back on its heels.
 
   The mental health issues impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic on individuals, families, and communities will not end once a vaccine is fully distributed. It will be experienced for several years to come. "Trauma not transformed is trauma transferred." The speed at which this pandemic arrived on the scene and the apparent lack of attention to the mental health needs of those suffering through this pandemic has created a recipe for continued distress. There is a clear need for encouraging collaboration and finding ways to address these issues.
 
Journal of Emergency Management invites manuscripts directly related to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. We are particularly interested in the following areas:


  • Trauma and Resilience in the Wake of COVID-19
  • Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings
  • Mental Health Care for Emergency Management and Affiliate Professions
  • First Responder and Front-line Impacts
  • Disparities in Mental Health Services and Outcomes
  • Social and Mental Health Problems in Global and/or Domestic Settings
  • Compassion Fatigue, Depression and Anxiety
  • Lockdown Fatigue, Social Isolation and Confinement
  • Suicide Rates and Prevention During and After the COVID-19 Pandemic
  • Managing Staff and Laypersons with Comorbid Substance Use Disorders
  • Researching and Retooling Emergency Messaging and Communication to Reduce Stress
  • COVID-19 and Nationwide Protests
  • Global Mental Health and International Impacts
  • Secondary Trauma
  • Serial Traumatization from Broadcast and Social Media and Rationalization/Sensemaking
  • Patients Suffering from Psychiatric Disorders and/or Lack of In-Person Caregiver Access
  • Vulnerable Populations
  • Pandemic Planning
  • ** We will work collaboratively with IAEM and their #IAEMSTRONG campaign
  • We will consider any manuscript that creates/delivers tools to reduce items listed above.
 
The latest Call for Papers is available at this link: https://wmpllc.org/ojs/index.php/jem/pages/view/Mental_Health 
 
Manuscript Submission:
 
Manuscript should be submitted directly to the Journal of Emergency Management manuscript submission system. Details are located here: https://www.wmpllc.org/ojs/index.php/jem/pages/view/Manuscripts
 
Deadlines:
 
Manuscript submissions will be accepted through the end of Q2-2021 and will be placed in the special issue of our online edition of JEM
 
Article Types:
 
We will review articles across the spectrum as original papers, research, best practices, creative solutions, short stories, training, brief communications, short reviews of existing programs as well as creative mental health management, coping and stress reduction original papers. Additional documented modalities for managing the topics above will be reviewed with the goal of sharing useful cutting edge tools to improve and/or address mental health of colleagues and laypersons in your protection. We are happy to preview any submissions.
 
Article Length:
 
Our traditional article length limit is 3,500 words. We will address length limitations on a per article basis.
 
Additional Media Formats:
 
We will accept non-paper based submissions (video, powerpoint, etc) as long as they include the standard JEM abstract format, all citation details, and all rights are cleared and assignable. Please contact our office for more details. 
 
Questions may be directed to the email above or you may contact our offices at 781-899-2702 Ext 114 or 108, Monday - Friday, 9am-4pm EST.
  
Subscribe to JEM
  
Visit www.emergencymanagementjournal.com, "Register" as a user and click on the "Subscription Information" link on site, or contact 781-899-2702 ext.108, or email: jem@pnpco.com

Advertising:
 
Commercial advertising and donations will be accepted in this special issue to defray the costs of producing this content in an accelerated process.
 
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