Wildland Fire Medical and Public Health Advisory Team (MPHAT)

On April 6, 2020, the FMB established the Wildland Fire Medical and Public Health Advisory Team (MPHAT) to address medical and health-related issues specific to the interagency administration of mission critical wildland fire management functions under a COVID-19 modified operating posture.

Through more than two years of coexisting with COVID-19, the MPHAT served as a valuable resource. Through lessons learned during COVID-19, FMB recognized the greater subject matter expertise and advisory need on the holistic health and wellbeing of our federal firefighters. As a result, the scope of the MPHAT Charter was updated to designate MPHAT an interagency advisory group to the FMB focused on bringing in necessary expertise from internal and external subject matter experts to provide advice, recommendations, guidance, and coordination on related wildland firefighter health and wellbeing matters. The MPHAT Charter and subsequent guidance issued via FMB Memorandum can be found on this page.

Wildland Firefighter Health and Wellbeing

2023 Prevention and Management of Infectious Disease During Wildland Fire Operations

Purpose

Wildland fire personnel should consider these public health practices and management guidelines as an anchor point from which further, site-specific organizational, or unit-specific fire management practices and guidelines can be expanded. This guidance is intended to help limit/prevent the spread of infectious disease, including COVID-19 within the wildland fire community, and may be used at home, duty stations, while in travel, and on incidents.

This guidance will continue to be updated for the fire community in alignment with the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommendations and the Safer Federal Workforce Taskforce direction.