The Adele and Joel Sandberg Women’s Initiative
Mission
The Adele and Joel Sandberg Women’s Initiative at United Hatzalah was launched in 2021 with the goal of doubling the number of female emergency responders from 1,000 to 2,000 over the course of five years. To reach this goal, supporters of the Women’s Initiative have committed to raising $1.8 million each year for a total of $9 million.
Women’s Initiative Numbers
As of April 2023, the Women’s Initiative increased the number of women in emergency medical roles by 30% to 1,300, by recruiting, training, and equipping more than 270 women from across the spectrum of Israeli society to become medics, psychotrauma responders, ambulance drivers, First Aid instructors, and dispatch operators. United Hatzalah’s Women’s Initiative has:
Other Services
Other Services
The Psychotrauma & Crisis Response Unit offers a brief training course to outside organizations, groups, corporations and businesses on psychological first aid. Our unit has been asked to run one-time courses for IDF sanctions, groups in the police force and even for a local squad of firemen. For more details contact Avi at [email protected].
Aid for UH Medics & Debriefings
“Kindness starts at home,” states the age-old saying. For the Psychotrauma & Crisis Response Unit, this is a core value. United Hatzalah comprises 6,200 medics and that number is constantly rising. Quite often, our very own medics experience emotionally-taxing calls and walk away from a scene with emotions and feelings that they do not know how to process. Our unit assists our medics in dealing with what they witnessed or were involved in either with 1:1 “sessions” or in group settings.
Dog K9 Unit
The Psychotrauma & Crisis Response Unit started a K9 Unit which, as of today, includes one very special puppy named Lucy. Lucy, the orange-vest-wearing psychotrauma dog, has assisted people in crises on numerous occasions by helping bystanders and family members move away from the traumatic scene by “following” the dog. When there is a medical crisis, the first step that needs to take place is the removal of the individuals from the scene. The dog plays an important role in helping our responders remove individuals from the situation. Once the person or people are removed, they many times become distracted by and calmed down simply by focusing on the dog, thereby immediately lessening the immediate stress.
Read about Lucy in Surfside, Florida: The beauty of humanity brought out by a therapy dog in Surfside.
International Missions
In August 2017, when Hurricane Irma hit, United Hatzalah sent a rescue team from Israel composed of 6 rescue and 3 Psychotrauma & Crisis Response Unit volunteers. They first went to Atlanta and drove hours through destruction and made their way all away to Savannah, Miami, Naples and the Florida Keys. They helped in every way possible whether it was assisting people move their things, receiving food and drink or helping victims of the flooding with their trauma. Watch this story on Fox 5 news. Read more