For law enforcement, few things are more important than the lives of the officers and the people they serve. We understand the service they provide our communities comes with personal sacrifice, and we know the challenges officers face day in and day out. Despite these challenges, they show up every day to answer the call.

That’s why FirstNet established a health and wellness program in May 2020 to address the wellness problems facing public safety. A key component of this commitment is the FirstNet Health & Wellness Coalition. The coalition integrates responder, community, industry, and academic capabilities to support the holistic health, wellness, and readiness of  first responders. And the coalition serves as the backbone to everything we do to support the health and well-being of first responders.

Working Together

To effect change, public safety needs to come together. And that’s what the FirstNet Health and Wellness Coalition does. We come together to assess the data on first responder health and wellness, identify priorities through a comprehensive needs assessment, focus those priorities into strategic efforts, and share best practices and lessons learned.

Leadership at all levels of public safety organizations—including law enforcement—share my passion for health and wellness. Chiefs and leaders across law enforcement, fire, EMS, dispatch, corrections, emergency management, and health care are passionate about taking action and creating systems for change. Through our time working together, we’ve learned some things along the way.

Leadership Matters

Together, we’ve identified that leadership matters. Responders have said they want to see leadership engaged in wellness efforts, not just talking about it.¹

We’ve learned that mental health and mental wellness are a part of the conversation. There is a mental health crisis facing the first responder community. The rates of PTSD, depression, and anxiety among public safety personnel far exceed the rates in the general population. By its very nature, emergency response is stressful. There are real mental health impacts to those who serve our communities—and we need to do something about it.

Family members of first responders have said they want to be involved in the discussion. They’re often the first to see signs of deterioration in their responder, and they’re not sure where to turn or whether the department will support them. We have started facilitating this discussion.

We’ve also learned that stigma is a real thing. The coalition started having those hard conversations about suicide, depression, post-traumatic stress, access to health care, and other issues because we learned that to make change, we have to be the first ones to talk about the problems facing public safety.

Celebrating the Wins

The issues facing public safety are weighty issues.  It would be easy to let these problems pull us down, but we’ve learned to celebrate the wins. Responders want to be involved in their health and wellness. They care about their mental health as much as their physical health, and they like to see opportunities for wellness in their local departments.

This kind of engagement is important. The desire to be involved in wellness is the first step towards change. The culture is changing. We have a lot of work to do, but we’re headed in the right direction.

Finally, we’ve learned there are many organizations working to support responders, and we’re committed to supporting their efforts. Here’s a snapshot of some of the actions we’re taking to support first responders:

• • • In June 2021, we launched the FirstNet ROG the Dog program through a partnership with Global Medical Response. The animal-assisted therapy program consists of a group of trained Labradoodles specializing in helping first responders on the front lines.
    • We collaborated with Boulder Crest Institute and its unique first responder initiative to develop and deliver transformative post-traumatic growth-based training programs to enhance the well-being of first responders.
    • We’re supporting O2X Human Performance to bring health, wellness, and physical performance training workshops to first responders.
    • We’re supporting First H.E.L.P. and Blue H.E.L.P., both part of an organization committed to addressing suicide prevention among law enforcement and other public safety organizations and supporting families of first responders who lost their lives to suicide.
    • In September 2021, we collaborated with The Quell Foundation, which provides resources to help first responders struggling with mental health, to help produce their documentary on mental health in public safety: “Lift the Mask:  First Responders Sound the Alarm.”
    • In 2020, we launched a collaboration with All Clear Foundation to help increase access to education, resources, and support for first responders struggling with health and wellness issues. With the ResponderRel8 application and the foundation’s Responder Strong training, we’re providing resources to public safety.

Some resources may seem cost- and time-prohibitive, but many will work with your departments to ensure they meet your needs. Our sponsorship of the Lighthouse Health and Wellness app ensures law enforcement agencies can get a free wellness application, putting health and wellness resources at their officers’ fingertips.

Being There

We’ve learned through our efforts together that “being there” matters. The public safety community has grown together through a sense of caring about the lives of first responders.

Note:

¹Anna Courie, FirstNet First Responder Needs Assessment Report (Dallas, TX: 2021).