Operation Assist (The Childrens Health Fund)

Contact Name: Robert Bristow

Contact Number: (917)543-2236 or rbb25@columbia.edu

Type of Work: medical workers (physicians, emergency
workers) to drive to underserved areas, and provide medical
assistance.

Need to be medical professionals

Housing: housing, food and bedding provided

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From the website:

Providing Assistance to Communities/in Crisis, CHF Taking
the Lead

The Children’s Health Fund has provided urgently needed
medical assistance via its state-of-the-art Mobile Medical
Units to victims of Hurricane Andrew in Florida in 1992,
and at ground zero in New York City after the terror attacks
of 9/11. With this experience gained in working with
communities in crisis, CHF responded to the urgent health
and public health needs of the Gulf Coast region that
resulted from Hurricane Katrina by establishing Operation
Assist, a collaboration with the National Center for
Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) at the Mailman School of
Public Health at Columbia University. Operation Assist
is poised to meet the challenges that will persist well
into the future of this devastated region. Since September
2005, there have been over 19,000 medical and mental health
visits provided in the devastated Gulf Coast Region.

CLINICAL SERVICES:

Operation Assist’s programs provide critically needed
medical services to children and families devastated
by Hurricane Katrina. Three new permanent children’s
health projects have been established in Gulfport/Biloxi,
MS; New Orleans, LA and Baton Rouge, LA.

MENTAL HEALTH:

The Community Support and Resiliency Program (CSRP)
provides children and families in the Gulf with
critically needed mental health services in their
affected communities. CSRP mobile mental health units
are specially designed to help our programs in
Gulfport/Biloxi, MS; New Orleans, LA and Baton Rouge,
LA.

PUBLIC HEALTH:

Operation Assist identifies health and mental health
needs of affected children and families and assesses
environmental health impacts resulting from these
disasters.

By sponsoring comprehensive rapid health assessment of
families displaced by Hurricane Katrina, CHF has found
that thousands of children are in the midst of an
unprecedented health crisis.

ADVOCACY:

The Operation Assist Campaign for Children’s Health has
mobilized national leaders in children’s health to call
for Congressional hearings and emergency funding for
children in the Gulf affected by Hurricanes Katrina and
Rita.