Wilderness First Aid, June 2023

About

On June 15th - 18th, The City College Outdoors Project, an outdoors initiative run through the Office of the President at The City College of New York, had their first ever Wilderness First Aid course. The program invited students, staff, and faculty to the Appalachian Mountain Club Highland Center at Crawford Notch in the White Mountain National Forest of New Hampshire. The course helped our CCNY cohort prepare for various medical situations that may arise when one is in the backcountry and there is no ambulance, you are short on supplies, the wait for help is unknown and moving the patient a short distance might take hours. WFA also teaches you how to avoid these situations through increased awareness of how to prepare ahead of time for backcountry trips where medical resources will not be readily available.

The course is based on modern emergency medical care practices modified and specialized for backcountry environments.

The WFA course was a two-day, 16-hour course (8 hours/day) and covered a full range of situations, from scrapes and blisters to life-threatening emergencies. Participants learned accident scene management and how to communicate effectively with an emergency rescue party. Our Wilderness First Aid training also included a separate CPR course. By the completion of this training, all participants received a 2-year WFA Certification. Our WFA training instructor, Jean Lee was highly experienced in the outdoors, WFA certified, EMT/Outdoor Emergency Care (OEC) certified (or higher), and CPR certified; she also made sure to make our CCNY cohort feel welcome and heard.

Our staff, Dee Mozeleski; Vice President of the Office of Institutional Advancement, Communications, and External Relations, Ashley Mastroddi; City College Outdoor Programs Manager, and Akasha Solis; City College Special Projects Manager, arranged transportation for the CCNY attendees, which aimed at providing accessibility and ease on this 9 hour drive. Our mission at the Outdoors Project is to create accessibility and greater representation in the outdoor community. As we have seen, outdoor organizations are only now starting to include people of color, however, there is still a very long way to go. Our project aims to uplift underserved communities from all religions, backgrounds, ethnicities, and the LGBQIA+ community, to provide our CCNY community with experiences where they can bond with one another, create a lasting community, and connect with the outdoors in ways they may have not been able to before.

In attendance we had students from various backgrounds such as Biology, Pre-Med, Environmental Engineering, Psychology; a dedicated public safety officer, Jeffrey Fox; Accounts Payable staff, Arieni Hernandez; and faculty member and NASA Scientist, Terry Elkes Professor, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Kyle McDonald.

Our team looks forward to providing more safe spaces and inclusivity in the outdoors, and we greatly thank our team at the Appalachian Mountain Club who made this possible. If you are interested in what we do, please see our webpage.