Emergency Responder Health Monitoring and Surveillance

The framework includes different backgrounds such as emergency management, fire service, law enforcement, emergency medical services, public health, mental health, disaster relief, and volunteer organizations, as well as construction and other skilled support who may be participating in a broad range of activities including assessment, search and rescue, investigation, recovery, cleanup and restoration.

NIOSH and the Unified Area Command (UAC), implemented some of the initial ERHMS guidelines, including deployment-phase rostering, injury and illness surveillance, assessment of and protection from chemical and environmental exposures, as well as prompt and accessible communication with workers and their communities.

[13] These recommendations included improving the rostering process both in the pre-deployment and deployment phases to ensure registration of all workers involved and better communication and transmission of guidance about environmental risks.

Additional recommendations for the deployment phase included increased personal protective equipment (PPE) use, better management of heat stress, and improved reporting of exposures, illnesses, and injuries.

Further, ERHMS recommends the implementation of a Health and Safety Plan (HASP), which monitors and documents worker activities and use of personal protective equipment, assesses any potential exposures, and surveys responder illness and injury, both physical and mental, throughout the duration of the response.

Finally, ERHMS provides for the creation of an after-action report, in which the management of the emergency response during all phases would be evaluated in order to identify lessons learned and areas for improvement.

[17] The finalized framework, titled in full the “Emergency Responder Health Monitoring and Surveillance (ERHMS) NRT Technical Assistance Document (TAD)” was published on January 20, 2012, and a companion document, “Emergency Responder Health Monitoring and Surveillance: A Guide for Key Decision Makers,” was published on February 6, 2012.