The authors provide tips for communicating risk internally (within agencies) and externally (with the community). Strategies for communicating with officers’ families, other agencies, the public, and the are included in the guide.

This guide provides First Responders agencies with the steps to follow to ensure good health for their workforce. The authors offer an overview of occupational health and safety, review comprehensive occupational health and safety programs, discuss assessing current efforts, and present challenges and provide recommendations for overcoming them.

The purpose of this report is to provide a step-by-step planning process guide to ensure the continuation of police work during an influenza pandemic. The resource includes information on identifying a department planning team, gathering information and resources, communicating internally and externally before and during a pandemic influenza, and exercising and updating the plan.

This free online course is designed to help first responders (police, firefighters, and emergency medical services personnel) cope with the opioid overdose crisis. The course highlights stressors first responders face due to the crisis, as well as coping and stress management strategies. The course is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Pre-hospital Continuing Education for continuing education credit.

This resource collection includes materials to help both mental health treatment professionals and first responders during the COVID-19 pandemic. Resources address helping individuals manage stress during the pandemic, self-care, and approaches to assistance such as Psychological First Aid.

This online fact sheet explains how disasters and their aftermath may involve traumatic incidents—and therefore traumatic incident stress—for emergency and other disaster responders. It highlights the physical, cognitive, emotional, and behavioral symptoms of stress that disaster responders may experience, as well as tips and resources to assist responders in taking care of their own physical, mental, and emotional health.

This part of the SAMHSA Disaster Technical Assistance Center (DTAC) website explains that responders face heightened risk of mental illness and substance use disorders due to the nature of their work. It identifies signs of stress; ways to manage stress; and related resources from SAMHSA DTAC, including online trainings and tip sheets.

This free, 1-hour online course for fire and emergency medical services (EMS) personnel provides information on stressors and behavioral health issues and conditions that are more common in fire and EMS. It also covers techniques for healthy coping and stress management. The course is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for Pre-hospital Continuing Education for continuing education credit.

This 8-minute video provides Crisis Counseling Assistance and Training Program crisis counselors, or anyone working with disaster survivors, with techniques for stress management and self-care. The video explains that providing support for disaster survivors, while important and rewarding, can cause distress; offers concrete tips for self-care; and includes a demonstration of a breathing exercise to reduce stress.

This tip sheet notes the importance of developing stress management skills before responding to a disaster, as well as using these skills in coping with the stress often involved in disaster response. It suggests steps to take before, during, and after deployment; identifies signs of stress; and lists sources of additional support.

This tip sheet provides tips for disaster response workers transitioning back to routine work after responding to a disaster or traumatic event. It focuses on stress management, fatigue, and emotion management to provide coping strategies to first response workers.

This tip sheet describes compassion fatigue and its components, burnout and secondary traumatic stress. It offers tips for coping with compassion fatigue, and it also describes compassion satisfaction and notes ways to foster compassion satisfaction among members of your response team.

This tip sheet describes aspects of the transition families go through when a member returns home after a disaster deployment. It also suggests ways that family members other than the responder can navigate the transition and support the responder in coping with the return home.

This pamphlet defines and describes indirect trauma, which is sometimes also referred to as compassion fatigue or vicarious trauma. It explains how indirect traumatization occurs, highlights effects of indirect trauma, and suggests ways to cope.

This website offers information for prehospital patient care, providing resources for emergency medical service personnel to help them do their jobs better and more safely. The site features information about training, as well as news articles about major emergencies, medical issues, and administrative and leadership topics.

The ProQOL is a commonly used measure of the negative and positive effects of helping others who have experienced suffering and trauma, including disaster survivors. The ProQOL has sub-scales for compassion satisfaction, burnout, and secondary traumatic stress.

This website provides information about trauma and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) for a variety of audiences.

This tip sheet explains how families are typically notified after a disaster that their relatives are missing or deceased, and it emphasizes the importance of working with local authorities on notification of families in a sensitive, appropriate way. It offers do’s and don’ts for disaster responders helping local and national authorities make families aware that their relatives are missing or dead following a disaster.

Compatible with iPhone, iPad, and Android devices, this app is designed to support responders in meeting the mental health and substance use-related needs of disaster-affected communities. It can be used to access preparedness and response resources and find local mental health and substance use disorder treatment services for referrals.

The SAMHSA Disaster Distress Helpline is a 24-hour helpline staffed by trained counselors. The helpline can be used by any person, including a first responder, who is experiencing emotional distress due to a disaster. Responders may also want to make disaster survivors aware of this resource.

This web page provides information for people who are traveling out of the United States to support individuals and communities, including those that have been affected by disasters. It suggests steps for humanitarian aid workers to take before, during, and after travel to protect their physical and mental health.

Designed for a range of types of disaster responders, this pocket guide describes the cycle of stress in the body and highlights signs of stress. It also presents tips for managers to prevent and manage stress for themselves and their workers during disaster response, as well as offering simple, practical stress management techniques for responders.

This free, on-demand online course describes Stress First Aid and prepares fire, emergency medical services, and rescue personnel to use this technique, which includes several actions responders can use to manage stress for themselves and civilians they assist. While the course is available free of charge, users must set up a free account with the Fire Hero Learning Network website to access it.

This part of the EHS Today website is an information resource for disaster and other emergency responders. It features articles, webinars, and other resources about emergency management, disaster preparedness for businesses, specific disasters, fire safety, and other topics.

The ERHMS™ framework provides ideas for protecting disaster and emergency responders in an emergency of any size and in any setting. Designed for incident command staff members, leaders in response organizations, healthcare professionals, and responders themselves, the framework can be used to develop and implement a plan for monitoring and surveillance of responder health before, during, and after deployment.