What is the Medical Reserve Corps?

The Denton County Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) is a group of highly trained citizens dedicated to supporting the county during public health emergencies or natural disasters. The MRC was established after President Bush’s 2002 State of the Union Address, in which he asked all Americans to volunteer in support of their country. It is a partner program with Citizen Corps, a national network of volunteers dedicated to ensuring hometown security. Citizen Corps, along with AmeriCorps, Senior Corps, and the Peace Corps are part of the President's USA Freedom Corps, which promotes volunteerism and service nationwide.

The Denton County Plan

Denton County’s goal is to prepare over 2000 medical and non-medical volunteers to respond. As you may be aware, during Hurricane Katrina and September 11, 2001, literally thousands of Americans rushed to Louisiana and New York City to offer assistance to the helpless victims that we all witnessed on our television news broadcasts, but many were turned away because they had not been trained to respond in concert with emergency responders at the state, local and federal levels. The Medical Reserve Corps is the mechanism that we use to ensure that when large numbers of Americans are injured or exposed to a health hazard, they can be treated or cared for expeditiously. In addition, Denton County also provides all training, Go bags, and Response gear for free!

How Can Private Citizens Help?

You can volunteer and encourage friends and family to become members of the Medical Reserve Corps so that you can all have a part in supporting the community during a large scale disaster or event. It is highly likely that if this kind of catastrophic event occurred, your work would be temporarily halted or significantly reduced because of the magnitude of the disaster, so our request will not normally require you taking off from work. When we support disaster victims in our community from other parts of the country, our volunteers work during their off hours. Either way, you decide how much or how little time to give.

How Do I Get Involved?

Contact the Denton County Medical Reserve Corps Coordinator at (940) 349-2910 or send an email to let us know that you are interested. Register now, your community needs you!