The White Paper
27 October 2009I discovered that one of the essential historical documents of EMS is available to read online, for free: the famous “White Paper,” formally titled Accidental Death and Disability: The Neglected Disease of Modern Society. This is the document that led directly to the development of the first National Standard EMS Curricula, and EMS’ unfortunate association with NHTSA.
Hey Doc, if you thought EMS should fall under one agency…who do you think it should be? Health and Human Services? Homeland Security? (With the state of the TSA…maybe not a good idea.)
And how come there isn’t a centralized agency responsible for the Fire Service curriculum?
The more I think about it, the curriculum part of EMS shouldn’t fall under any gov’t agency–it should be an independent body, perhaps the NREMT. After all, medical school curriculum is controlled by AAMC, not a gov’t agency.
Similarly, NFPA standards are the goal of every fire agency, so curricula tend to look alike even if they are not designed specifically by a central agency.
However, Fire does have a seat at the federal planning table–USFA. If EMS were to get that, its most natural home would probably be HHS, instead of the current mishmosh that exists (partly under NHTSA/DOT, while USFA offers EMS courses, and clearly HHS has its hand in the pot via CMS). However, just consolidating everything into one USEMSA would improve things regardless of which dept it’s nominally under.