Welcome to the fall semester from the Health Emergency Response Office (HERO) team! This is one of my favorite times of year on our campuses. So many new faces and new opportunities. And I so appreciate our culture of life-long learning. In that spirit, I have asked my HERO colleague, Oona Beall, to pen this Director’s Update to share about upcoming opportunities related to personal emergency preparedness. Thank you, Oona!
Thank you for the opportunity, Jill. I’m honored to share some of what I’ve been working on to support personal emergency preparedness for our university community.
Fall is my favorite season, the crisp air, the smell, even some of the grey and rainy days pushing me inside towards a good book instead of out to clean up the garden. For growers like myself, this is a time to put the garden to bed before we spend the short Winter days planning for next year. While not driven solely by the cycles of the seasons, here at HERO, we still know how important it is to continue to plan and prepare so that we can respond to health emergencies when called. In my role as Program Specialist, focused on training and exercises, being more prepared spans many levels of our institution, including supporting the students, staff, and faculty of the University of Minnesota in their own personal emergency preparedness.
It is not news that there are many challenges we face here on campus, across our cities, and across our country. Personal preparedness is one way that we can each choose to grow our skills and knowledge so that we are more able to help in our communities’ more difficult moments. While it might seem like one more thing to do, learning basic health preparedness can help us all feel more connected to each other, knowing that we can count on each other in hard times. It also has the potential to remind us that we are in fact part of the solution and we can be a force for good in our communities.
In that spirit, one of the most fulfilling aspects of my work is putting on the UMNPrepared training series. I’m both keeping with what we know works while also getting creative with how we offer these learning opportunities to our campus. These trainings focus on basic health preparedness skills including:
- Bystander CPR
- Stop the Bleed
- Overdose/Naloxone
- Basic First Aid
They will be on offer to the Twin Cities campuses throughout the school year. For most of them, we partner with experts from across our institution and they are all free for you to attend. Of particular excitement for me is our collaboration with Boynton Health and Steve Rummler Hope Network to bring four Overdose/Naloxone Trainings to you over the next two semesters!
To learn more about when these trainings will be offered, follow HERO on social media.
-Oona M. Beall, MPH
Program Specialist: Training and Exercises