First Responder Wellness Research

Sharing this upcoming opportunity for anyone in the law enforcement or first responder wellness space who may be interested.

The Fraternal Order of Police Education & Empowerment Summit, Pathways to Excellence 2027, will be held February 21–26, 2027, in Las Vegas.

The week offers several different tracks, including:
• Wellness Professionals’ Forum
• Labor/Legal Leadership Forum
• Wellness Summit
• Chaplaincy Leadership & Development
• Leadership Matters

I especially wanted to share this for those working in officer wellness, peer support, behavioral health, leadership, and other areas supporting law enforcement personnel. Events like this can be a great opportunity to learn what other agencies and professionals are doing, make connections, and bring new ideas back to your own organization.

📅 February 21–26, 2027
📍 South Point Hotel, Casino & Spa
Las Vegas, Nevada

Registration is now open, and individual tracks can be selected based on your interests.

If this fits the work you are doing, take a look at the information on the flyer!

Our next speaker in the speaker spotlight is Joy Hutchinson. Joy brings a perspective that captivates and educates first responders. Welcome Joy, we are glad to have you back!
First Responder Wellness Research

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Our next speaker in the speaker spotlight is Joy Hutchinson. Joy brings a perspective that captivates and educates first responders. Welcome Joy, we are glad to have you back!
First Responder Wellness Research

Looking forward to being back in Tennessee in just a few weeks for the 5th Annual Answering the Call Conference!

This event brings together first responders, advocates, and professionals around an issue that continues to deserve our attention: first responder mental wellness and su***de prevention.

If you haven't registered yet, there is still time to join us!

📅 October 19–20, 2026
📍 Williamson Family Farms, Murfreesboro, TN
💲 Registration: $125
⏰ Registration deadline: October 13

I’m looking forward to seeing familiar faces, making some new connections, and spending two days with people committed to supporting those who serve our communities.

Will I see you there?

Registration information and additional conference details are available on the Tennessee First Responders Foundation website listed on the flyer.

***deprevention

👍
When the Mental Health Call Comes Through, Who Responds?

🚑🧠 First responders are increasingly being asked to respond to mental health crises—but what happens when we change the response model?

For EMS professionals, behavioral health calls are nothing new. You may arrive to someone experiencing severe distress, suicidal thoughts, psychosis, substance-related concerns, or another crisis where the primary need isn't necessarily medical trauma or law enforcement.

These calls can be complicated.

What does this person need right now? Who is best equipped to respond? And where should they go next?

Kang, Lu, and Pang (2026) examined one approach being used in New York City: the Behavioral Health Emergency Assistance Response Division (B-HEARD).

B-HEARD was designed to provide an EMS-based response to certain nonviolent mental health emergencies rather than relying on the traditional police response alone. Teams combine EMS personnel with behavioral health professionals.

Researchers analyzed EMS dispatch data from January 2019 through December 2024, comparing 31 precincts that implemented B-HEARD with 45 precincts that did not.

The results are important—but they aren't simple.

📍 The impact varied by location and implementation period.

Some groups of precincts did not experience statistically significant changes in mental health-related EMS call rates. Precincts implementing the model during a later phase did show significant reductions, with some effects appearing well after implementation.

⏳ And that may be one of the most useful lessons for first responders.

Changing what happens after a 911 call isn't as simple as putting a new team on the street.

A crisis-response model has to function in the real world:

Dispatch has to identify the appropriate calls.
The right resources have to be available.
Crews need to understand the response model.
Behavioral health and EMS systems have to work together.
And responders need somewhere appropriate to connect people for continued care.

The researchers found that the effects of B-HEARD were variable and delayed, with reductions, when observed, tending to emerge around a year after implementation. The overall average effect was not statistically significant.

That doesn't give us a simple verdict on EMS-based behavioral health response.

It gives us something potentially more useful:

Implementation matters.

For the people actually answering these calls, a program's name matters far less than whether the system works when the tones drop.

Do dispatchers know when to activate it?

Is the team actually available?

Do EMS, behavioral health, and law enforcement understand one another's roles?

Is there a clear pathway for the person after the immediate crisis?

And are agencies evaluating the program long enough to understand what is—and isn't—working?

First responders are already part of the mental health crisis-response system.

The larger question is whether we're building systems around them that provide the right resources, the right partners, and the right response for the person on the other end of the call.

📖 Reference:
Kang, B., Lu, Y. F., & Pang, J. (2026). An EMS-based crisis response model for mental health–related EMS calls: A quasi-experimental study. Psychiatric Services, 77(7), 616–622.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ps.20250528

A Great Cause in Las Vegas

If you are in the Las Vegas area, I want to share an event supporting an organization that does tremendous work for our first responder community.

The Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance is hosting Answering the Call: Dinner, Entertainment & Silent Auction, with proceeds supporting FBHA’s work with firefighters, EMS personnel, dispatchers, and their families. Their efforts include behavioral health education, su***de prevention, professional resources, financial assistance, scholarships, and support for families who have lost a first responder to su***de. Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance

I have had the opportunity to know Jeff Dill through many conversations over the years and to speak alongside him at conferences. Jeff is an amazing advocate for first responder behavioral health, and his commitment to this work is genuine. As a retired fire captain and counselor, he founded FBHA to help address the unique behavioral health needs of firefighters and EMS professionals. Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance

So, if you're in Vegas, this is a chance to have a great evening while supporting a great cause and the people who spend their careers taking care of others.

Tickets are currently listed at $100 for general admission and $125 for VIP, and there is also a silent auction for those who want to support the organization. Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance

🔥 If you're nearby, check it out and support Jeff and the FBHA team!

Event information, tickets, and silent auction

***deprevention

Closing the Gap Between Need and Care

🚑 Having mental health resources available doesn't necessarily mean EMS professionals will use them. So what actually predicts getting help?

O’Dare and colleagues examined mental health and support-service utilization among 36,697 licensed Florida EMTs and paramedics.

One feature makes this study particularly valuable: researchers examined reported service use, rather than only attitudes toward counseling or intentions to seek help.

The findings challenge some common assumptions about EMS help-seeking.

🧠 Psychological symptoms mattered most.

Anxiety and depression were the strongest factors associated with using mental health or support services.

🤝 Peer support mattered, too.

Peer support emerged as one of the few system-level factors associated with increased service utilization, even after accounting for psychological symptoms.

That is an important finding.

Peer support may do more than provide someone to talk with. Within an EMS system, it may help create a bridge between recognizing distress and actually accessing care.

🚧 Stigma was more complicated than we often assume.

Stigma-related variables had weaker—and in some cases counterintuitive—associations with actual service utilization.

That does not mean stigma is irrelevant in EMS.

Instead, these findings suggest that explaining low help-seeking primarily through stigma may overlook other important factors influencing whether someone ultimately accesses care.

Suicidality and substance use also showed modest associations with service use beyond the primary symptom variables. The overall pattern remained consistent when researchers examined EMS personnel who reported trauma exposure.

For EMS organizations, the findings point toward a broader question than:

“Do we offer mental health resources?”

We also need to ask:

How do people get from experiencing distress to actually receiving appropriate care?

The authors identify several system-level strategies consistent with the findings:

• Early identification of psychological distress
• Routine symptom screening
• Strong peer-support infrastructure
• Structured pathways connecting personnel with services
• Confidential access to care
• Clinicians who understand the occupational realities of EMS

The goal isn't simply to make services available.

It is to close the gap between needing help and reaching care.

And that requires thinking about the entire pathway—not just the individual responder's willingness to ask.

📖 Reference:
O’Dare, K., Bowers, C., Beidel, D. C., Jiang, J., & McCoy, S. (2026). Closing the gap between need and care: Predictors of mental health service use in EMS. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 23(8), 978.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph23080978

Today was an incredible day at the Research to Practice Symposium: Strength in Service: Advancing First Responder Resilience Through Research and Practice.

I was honored to participate and speak alongside such knowledgeable and passionate professionals. The presentations were outstanding, and I am grateful for the meaningful conversations, new connections, and opportunities to learn from others committed to supporting first responders.

Thank you to everyone who made today so memorable. I am leaving inspired, encouraged, and excited about the work ahead!

If you were there and took pictures, please share them with me!

Sneak peak- I’m so thankful for opportunities like this! I get to stand alongside people who share the mission.

I’ve cited some of these people.

Shared their stories during lectures.

I can’t wait to continue these conversations!

🚑 A peer support program can exist on paper. But what makes a paramedic actually experience someone as a “peer”?

A new 2026 qualitative study explored the experiences of 13 paramedics who had recently used an established workplace peer-support program within an Australian ambulance service.

Researchers identified four major themes.

1️⃣ Support needs are shaped by the realities of paramedic work.

Paramedics used peer support for more than a single traumatic call.

Their needs included:

• Processing traumatic exposures
• Debriefing difficult clinical cases
• Managing the intersection between work and personal life
• Finding support when traditional sources of help were unavailable or insufficient

For some participants, peer support offered something particularly practical: immediate access to someone who understood the work.

2️⃣ Proactive outreach matters.

One of the strongest findings was the value participants placed on peers reaching out first.

That matters in a profession where someone may be struggling but still believe they should be able to handle things themselves.

Proactive contact reduced the need for paramedics to identify that they needed help, decide to ask for it, find someone, and initiate the conversation entirely on their own.

It could also communicate something larger:

Someone noticed. Someone cared enough to check.

3️⃣ Shared understanding can create both practical and emotional benefits.

Participants valued talking with someone who understood the occupational context.

That shared understanding could provide:

🤝 Validation
🧠 Normalization
🗣️ A place to process difficult experiences
🧭 Help navigating organizational systems
➡️ Connections to additional professional support when needed

But there was an important qualification.

4️⃣ Being a paramedic doesn't automatically make someone the right peer.

Participants described meaningful support as depending partly on the match between the peer supporter and the paramedic receiving support.

Experience level mattered.

Clinical role mattered.

Personal circumstances could matter.

Some experienced paramedics reported difficulty finding what they considered a “true peer”—someone with enough shared clinical and contextual experience to fully understand what they were discussing.

That is an important consideration when developing peer-support programs.

Peer support may not simply be about having another first responder available. It may also be about connecting someone with the right first responder.

This was a small qualitative study of people who had already used peer support within one Australian ambulance service, so the findings should not be generalized to every EMS organization or interpreted as evidence that peer support improves clinical mental health outcomes.

But the participants provide valuable insight into how these programs can be designed.

Peer support may be strongest when it is:

Proactive.
Accessible.
Grounded in shared understanding.
Connected to professional care when needed.
And thoughtful about who is matched with whom.

The question for agencies may therefore be bigger than:

“Do we have a peer-support program?”

It may also be:

“Have we built a peer-support system that makes it easier for the right person to reach the right responder at the right time?”

📖 Reference:
Sawtell, E. S., Cowlishaw, S., King, K., Dobbie, M. L., Bobetic, K. L., Elmer, J. J., Wolkow, A. P., & Morton, E. (2026). Paramedic perspectives on workplace peer support: A thematic analysis. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being, 21(1), 2722434.

🔗 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17482631.2026.2722434