The Northeast Arkansas Trauma Regional Advisory Council (NEATRAC) is presenting school districts in northeast Arkansas with life-saving training, tourniquets, and bandages which will be used to save lives and limbs when school staff members face situations requiring rapid bleeding control.
The Governor’s Trauma Advisory Council (TAC) presides over seven geographic regions of Arkansas and exists to provide advice and guidance to the Arkansas Department of Health. On a yearly basis, the TAC grants each region, including NEATRAC (which encompasses Craighead, Randolph, Clay, Lawrence, Greene, Mississippi, Poinsett, Cross, Crittenden, St. Francis, Lee, Prairie, Monroe and Phillips counties), funds for special projects such as this. The Arkansas Trauma Council is largely funded by the Arkansas Tobacco Tax of 2009.
The NEATRAC exists to reduce and prevent traumatic injury and death; to educate the public regarding injury prevention and the trauma system; and to promote high quality, efficient trauma and rehabilitation services throughout the region and state. Through standardization of care, data collection, peer review and needs assessments, the NEATRAC has created and implemented processes which work to improve outcomes for trauma patients and the performance of member agencies.
Since February of 2018, grant funds in the NEATRAC have been used to train local emergency responders and emergency department personnel as “Stop The Bleed†instructors and to purchase bleeding control items and high visibility storage bags. The project and its funding have provided training to more than 1200 teachers and layperson responders and will equip the school staffs of northeast Arkansas with Combat Application Tourniquets and soft bandaging supplies.
150 bleeding control kits will be dispensed in the coming days to participating schools in the 14- county region. These kits and provided training will allow bystanders to stop traumatic bleeding of their students, bystanders, and themselves in dangerous situations which may prevent the rapid arrival of EMS personnel, such as the presence of an “active shooter.â€
For more information on the initiatives of the NEATRAC, contact Paula Lewis, RN, at plewis@frmcar.com, or visit www.healthy.arkansas.gov
