Federal, state, and local programs are balanced with privately-supported delivery systems in an attempt to provide a healthy community environment, comprehensive illness and injury prevention, quality medical services, and fast and effective emergency care. These components of our community health care system developed independently and in most cases remain isolated from one another in management and operation. As health care resources become more scarce and community health expectations continue to increase, health care administrators and providers are searching for opportunities to eliminate redundancies, extend the value of services, and target delivery efforts for greater cost effectiveness. EMS and public health approach a similar challenge from different directions. Public health traditionally seeks to improve community health by monitoring population trends and manipulating environmental factors to prevent the spread of illness or injury agents.
Public health provides proactive, population-based services.
In contrast, EMS delivers reactive, individual-based health care. Where public health seeks to prevent the spread of illness or injury among the population, EMS is configured to deliver a fast response to individual victims. Recently, EMS and public health professionals have recognized the potential benefit of integrating these services to improve the delivery of community health care. Far-sighted professionals from both disciplines began to envision how a collaboration between these complementary services could result not only in improved efficiency for their traditional functions, but also in increased opportunities for reaching underserved segments of the community. Several initiatives were undertaken to define the nature of this partnership and build interest and commitment among the public health and EMS professions.