WITC in partnership to promote need for EMTs

From superiortelegram.com: “CEP awarded EMT recruitment grant for Ashland, Bayfield counties” — Wisconsin Office of Rural Health’s Rural Communities Initiatives program manager, Kevin Jacobson, congratulated Northwest Wisconsin Concentrated Employment Program Inc. (CEP) on receiving an $11,888 grant.

The grant will help partners in recruitment, training, and retention of emergency medical technicians. The grant focuses on providing resources to health care and community organizations in order to bring the highest quality of health care to rural and underserved populations.

The Bayfield and Ashland counties EMS Partnership includes Memorial Medical Center, Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College and CEP. This partnership was established to increase awareness of the need for EMTs. Implementation of the grant will provide funding for development of marketing materials, two recruitment events and the training of new EMTs.

“EMTs provide a vital role in our rural area,” said Bradford Gingras, chief operating officer of CEP. “In a region as spread out as ours, it is important to have and attract members from our community who are willing to donate their time and services to others.”

Recruitment events will take place in the spring. After a pool of potential EMTs has been created, CEP will complete an initial screening process with further screening and final determination completed by EMS providers.

The goal of this project is to have 18 individuals start training in the fall. In addition to training new EMTs, the project hopes to continually recruit new EMTs from the developed marketing materials.

For information, contact Marcia Pratt at (715) 682-9141 or mpratt@nwcep.org.