Focus on Health and Safety with the NVFC
June 18, 2012
The National Volunteer Fire Council offers a myriad of resources, training, and programs to help firefighters, emergency medical personnel, rescue workers, and their departments focus on their safety and health. Below is an overview of what is available.
Resources
- Volunteer Firefighter Health and Safety Priorities: Set forth in a series of BEST Practices for the fire and emergency services, the priorities are divided into the four main focus areas of Behavior, Equipment, Standards and Codes, and Training.
- Emergency Vehicle Safe Operations for Volunteer and Small Combination Emergency Service Organizations: This innovative educational program includes an emergency vehicle safety best practices self-assessment, standard operating guideline examples, and behavioral motivation techniques to enhance emergency vehicle safety.
- Rules of Engagement for Firefighter Health: Use these Rules to learn what you need to do to protect your health and stay at your best.
- Health and Wellness Guide for the Volunteer Emergency Services: This guide demonstrates why departments need a health and wellness program, how to overcome obstacles to establishing a program, and profiles of departments that have maintained successful programs.
- Addressing the Epidemic of Obesity in the United States Fire Service: This study looks at the scope and impact of obesity in the fire service, why obesity has become an epidemic, innovative trends in firefighter nutrition and fitness, and recommendations for combating obesity in the fire service.
- Critical Health and Safety Issues in the Fire Service: This report looks at critical fire service issues including obesity, heart attack, stress, sleep deprivation, behavioral health, and substance abuse and examines various initiatives, programs, and strategies available to help reduce firefighter fatalities.
- Heart-Healthy Firefighter Resource Guide: This guide is designed to help firefighters and emergency responders start on the path to a heart-healthy lifestyle.
- Securing Sponsors for Department Health and Wellness Programs: This toolkit takes you through the steps needed to identify, reach out to, and follow up with potential sponsors and donors of a department health and wellness program.
- Heart-Healthy Firefighter Cookbook: Find recipes that prove that eating healthy has never tasted better.
Training
The NVFC offers a series of online training courses on the following topics. Find all these and more at www.nvfc.org/trainingeducation/nvfc-academy-online-training/.
- STOP: Seatbelts Top Our Priorities
- Pump Operations and Maintenance
- Equipment Management Webinar Series
- Heat Stress – Choosing the Right PPE
- Behavioral Health
- Health and Wellness Advocate Training
- Health and Wellness Program Design
- Heart Health
- Functional Exercise
- Nutrition
- The Insulin Connection
- Obesity in the Fire Service
- Smoking Cessation
- The Impact of Stress on Firefighter Heart Health
Programs
- Heart-Healthy Firefighter Program: With heart attack the leading cause of on-duty firefighter deaths, this education and prevention program will help you take the steps you need to get heart-healthy, lower your heart disease risk factors, and establish a successful department health and wellness program.
- Put It Out: This campaign, created in partnership with Pfizer, is designed to help first responders quit smoking, departments to set up no-smoking policies, and family members to support their loved ones in their smoking cessation efforts.
