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Mission
Mission
The First Responder Consortium (FRC) is a network of academic researchers, clinicians, first-responder agencies, and non-profit organizations dedicated to furthering state-of-the art research, clinical best practices, and program development to improve the mental health and well-being of fire, EMS, law enforcement, and dispatch personnel. We bring academic researchers, clinicians, and agency leaders together to inform meaningful research that translates into practice to impact first responders’ lives.
Our communities rely on first responders to offer assistance, guidance, and care on the worst days of our lives. They run toward danger, disaster, injury, illness, and death while most others are running away. They risk their lives to keep our communities safe, and we at the First Responder Consortium honor their work and invest in their behavioral health. We recognize that chronic stress has an impact on minds and bodies. We are invested in leveraging scientific methods to enhance our understanding of the unique needs of first responders in order to improve their behavioral health and well-being.
The mission of the First Responder Consortium is to improve the behavioral health and well-being of first responders through multi-disciplinary, collaborative team science, stakeholder partnerships, community engagement, and consultation.
We understand the first responders are vulnerable because they are so courageous.
— Anka A. Vujanovic, Ph.D.
First responders have a calling to enter into fire, EMS, law enforcement, or emergency dispatch professions. That calling, along with a lot of training, experience, and good judgment, is what makes us uniquely capable of doing this job. However, repeated exposures to trauma on top of the regular, everyday stress of being alive in this world can take a toll on our emotional well-being. Ending the stigma of seeking mental health services is critical to our survival.
— Elizabeth Anderson-Fletcher, Ph.D.
Leadership
Leadership
Dr. Anka A. Vujanovic, Ph.D.
Director
Dr. Vujanovic, a licensed clinical psychologist, is Professor and Director of Clinical Training at Texas A&M University, where she is also Director of the Trauma and Stress Studies Center and the First Responder Consortium. Dr. Vujanovic maintains an appointment as Research Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Houston. She received a doctoral degree (Ph.D.) in clinical psychology from the University of Vermont and completed the pre-doctoral clinical psychology internship program at the Brown University Clinical Psychology Training Consortium. Dr. Vujanovic is a licensed clinical psychologist.
Dr. Vujanovic’s research program is focused on understanding the complexity of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and some of its most prevalent and high-risk correlates, including substance use disorders (SUD) and suicide risk, through the study of underlying psychological mechanisms relevant to treatment development. Dr. Vujanovic has worked with first responders for over eight years, and she is dedicated to improving behavioral health and wellness among first responder populations through collaboration and partnership.
Dr. Elizabeth Anderson-Fletcher, Ph.D.
Associate Director
Dr. Elizabeth Anderson-Fletcher is Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management in the Department of Decision and Information Sciences in the C. T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston, with a joint faculty appointment in the Hobby School of Public Affairs.
She is Faculty Director of Bauer Honors, Director of Accreditation in the Hobby School, and Associate Director of the First Responder Consortium (formerly UH First Responder Program).
Dr. Anderson-Fletcher is a volunteer Captain and Chaplain with Cypress Creek Fire Department/Harris County ESD 13 with twelve years of service. She is Assistant Director of the department’s mental wellness program and was project director for First Responder Mental Health and Wellness, a grant awarded to Cypress Creek Fire Department by the Office of the Governor, State of Texas, Criminal Justice Division. She was instrumental in building Cypress Creek’s mental wellness program, which offers firefighters peer support, chaplaincy services, and licensed professional counseling through a partnership with a clinical practice. She was a co-author of the Firefighter Behavioral Health Alliance’s inaugural white paper: Wounds of the Spirit: Moral Injury in Firefighters. She was also a co-author of the Volunteer Combination Officers Section (VCOS)/International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC) Yellow Ribbon Report, Under the Helmet: Performing an Internal Size-up, A Proactive Approach to Ensuring Mental Wellness, with subsequent involvement in developing behavioral health curriculum for fire departments.
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