Greetings,
As we ALL adjust to the challenges brought upon us by COVID-19, I thought it appropriate and certainly necessary that I bring you up to speed on the NDPC’s activities and assure you that we are still committed to the training of first and other responders and receivers in all disciplines. We also continue to value our relationships with the various national responder and professional organizations.
On behalf of the NDPC and RDPC member leadership, I offer our sincerest condolences to ALL of our partner and stakeholder community members that have lost loved ones, colleagues and friends to this dreaded disease. Together, with you, we remain hopeful and confident that we will successfully address, mitigate and recover from this.
In this special message, I want to address three areas; the status of NDPC training; what NDPC members are doing to assist our state, local, territorial, tribal and federal partners and; our focus, looking forward to recovery.
Regarding training, consistent with the requests of our national and federal partner leadership, the NDPC has temporarily suspended ALL residential and face to face training.
Despite our previous efforts to work with TPOCs to continue training following CDC guidance, this cessation action supported the need to reduce mass gatherings to mitigate and curtail the effects and spread of COVID-19. With that said, NDPC members have been and are in contact with TPOCs to discuss matters relating to cancellations, postponements and rescheduling. As soon as the decision is made to resume routine training activities, we will expeditiously inform you.
As we navigate the response and mitigation phases of the COVID-19 challenge, in collaboration with DHS/NTED, several of our member organizations and institutions, have responded to the nationwide need for PPE by identifying existing training stocks that can be utilized by state EMA’s .
Additionally, leveraging their individual institutional and organizational resources, our members have begun to identify and selectively convert existing courses to PODCasts and WebCasts; this effort is in addition to the NDPC’ s previously available online courses. This current effort is focused on awareness and refresher training and the education of our frontline responders and receivers on how to protect themselves as they go about their daily duties.
Looking forward to the recovery phase of the current situation, we will assemble a diverse group of subject matter professionals. Their task will include reaching out to first and other responders, receivers and their national organizations to compile and analyze lessons learned and to formulate recommendations on what new courses need to be quickly developed and offered. Additionally, we will work with DHS/NTED to expedite existing course update processes and to ensure that the appropriate courses reflect the lessons learned from the COVID-19 experience.
In closing , to our cadre of full time and wage instructors/ subject matter professionals and administrative and logistics support staff, rest assured that the emergency preparedness training, education and technical assistance needs of this nation still exist. Also, although we aren’t able to quantify it, the training you have provided in the past has contributed to the COVID-19 response efforts; without it, the situation could be much worse. Stay in touch and engaged with each other and your NDPC member organizations. We appreciate you and need you to be ready when we resume training.
To ALL… Stay Well and Be Safe!
Al Davis, Colonel, U.S. Marine Corps ( Ret.)
NDPC Chairman
