James M. Shultz MS, PhDDr. James M. Shultz is the Institute Section Chief and Partner of the High Alert Institute, LLC. The formerly the Director of the Center for Disaster and Extreme Event Preparedness (DEEP Center) and Co-Director, Miami Center for Public Health Preparedness, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, University of Miami Miller School of Medicine, Miami, Florida where he was also an Associate Professor. He has served as a Consultant to the Terrorism and Disaster Center and Disaster Research Training programs at the Oklahoma University Health Sciences Center. He is a member of the Behavioral Health Task Force for the Medical Reserve Corps. Dr. Shultz trains public health, public safety, behavioral health, and hospital-based professionals, and their community preparedness and response partners, in disaster behavioral health and emergency preparedness. In the past six years, he has personally served as lead trainer, presenting more than 500 training sessions to more than 20,000 persons throughout the United States, Canada and Latin America. No other disaster behavioral health training program has approached this volume of trainings and participants during this time period. Through the Miami Center for Public Health Preparedness, Dr. Shultz has managed a program that has provided community-based disaster preparedness trainings in Spanish to over 8,000 Hispanic immigrants to the United States during the past two years. This is one element of an expanding focus on special populations in disasters. He has also embarking on international trainings programs, focusing on Latin America. Dr. Shultz’s course materials have set the standard for the field of disaster behavioral health training. He has first-authored several texts including: DEEP PREP: All-Hazards Disaster Behavioral Health Training (2007), SURGE, SORT, SUPPORT: Disaster Behavioral Health for Health Care Professionals (2006), and All-Hazards Disaster Behavioral Health Training (2006). He has co-authored Children: Stress, Trauma and Disasters (2007) and just completed SAFETY FUNCTION ACTION for Disaster Responders: Training Manual Guidebook (2009). With the SAFETY FUNCTION ACTION program, Dr. Shultz is breaking new ground with training targeted toward optimizing “disaster health” (as introduced in Homeland Security Presidential Directive-21). SAFETY FUNCTION ACTION is a framework for achieving and maintaining a high level of disaster health and well-being with special focus on persons who have a disaster response role. SAFETY FUNCTION ACTION is trained primarily in train-the-facilitator format, with active and ongoing coaching of the trainers by Dr. Shultz and his staff. Dr. Shultz’s training programs will be launched in Latin America beginning in December 2009 and will be adapted to humanitarian crises with applications for refugee and internally-displaced populations, and for victims of community violence, war trauma, and kidnapping. Dr. Shultz received his Master of Science (M.S.) degree in Health Behavior Research and his Ph.D. in Behavioral Epidemiology from the University of Minnesota. His previous areas of focus have included cardiovascular disease epidemiology and HIV/AIDS epidemiology with applications for special populations including homeless persons. |