Following a brief scare over whether its host organization would be able to continue to manage the Medical Reserve Corps unit for Franklin County, volunteers with the group are working to form a nonprofit that would take over the corps from the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission and Fairview Hospital.
Tracy Rogers, director of emergency management at the Franklin Regional Council of Governments (FRCOG), explained that the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission and Great Barrington’s Fairview Hospital had announced earlier this summer that they would not be renewing the contract for oversight of the Franklin County branch of the Western Massachusetts Medical Reserve Corps.
However, after hearing concerns from members and volunteers, they agreed to extend the contract for another year so Franklin County’s Medical Reserve Corps could plan next steps.
The Medical Reserve Corps is a nationwide network of volunteers born out of 9/11. After seeing the need for medical personnel and other volunteers to be available in emergency scenarios, it was created as a way to have volunteers at the ready.
Rogers shared that the Franklin County network was formed around 2008 and has been used to support towns in running heating and cooling centers in extreme weather scenarios, as well as to support municipalities in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s a federal program that brings together medical, and not medical, volunteers. The idea came out of 9/11 to support response,” Rogers said. “Here, we tapped into them a lot during COVID. They were the nurses giving out vaccines. … They are volunteers the town can tap when needed.”
Rogers explained that while all the members of the network are volunteers, there are some costs associated with managing the Medical Reserve Corps and ensuring there is someone towns can contact when they need help, someone to deploy volunteers and someone who can organize trainings.
The network does not provide in-depth medical training, but it does offer training on incident command systems, physiological first aid, and basic first aid and CPR to non-medical volunteers.
The program is funded by grants that the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission receives through federal Public Health Emergency Preparedness (PHEP) cooperative agreements, and is subsidized by Fairview Hospital for the management of the Berkshire and Franklin Medical Reserve Corps.
“It’s a fiduciary responsibility. Grant funds flow through them to hire a part-time person for training and organizing the network,” Rogers said. “It’s hard for any one agency to cover the cost of giving someone enough hours for the role to be attractive.”
Rogers said volunteers are working to develop a nonprofit to back the reserve corps and that could help fund the part-time staff. She said the goal is to make the network more sustainable going forward, both financially and through increasing membership.
The network currently has 150 registered volunteers, many of whom Rogers said where active during the pandemic, but she’s not sure how many of them would be available to respond if called upon now.
“We’re always looking for more volunteers,” she said.
For more information, or to sign up to volunteer, visit wmmrc.org.
