How Tina Vidal-Duart Leads a Nationwide Humanitarian Community

When hurricanes, floods, or wildfires devastate communities throughout the USA, one of many first organizations mobilized is CDR Well being, a division of CDR Corporations that focuses on emergency and public well being providers. Led by Tina Vidal-Duart, CDR Well being is aiming to redefine what it means to deliver healthcare to folks when and the place they want it most.

“We’re boots on the bottom,” says Vidal-Duart. “Our job is to step in when conventional healthcare entry collapses, to make it possible for even amid whole loss, folks can nonetheless obtain pressing and ongoing care.”

CDR Well being operates throughout the continental United States, offering healthcare providers via authorities companies and partnerships with federal, state, and native authorities. Its groups reply to a variety of emergencies, hurricanes, wildfires, winter storms, and floods, and likewise ship specialised take care of refugees, rural populations, and people with disabilities or power circumstances.

Born from CDR’s emergency administration experience, CDR Well being emerged in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, which set the inspiration for its present mannequin: a full-scale medical logistics and healthcare supply system designed for catastrophe zones.

Vidal-Duart explains that the corporate sometimes will get activated 5–7 days earlier than a significant catastrophe makes landfall. “We start prepping drugs, assembling scientific groups, and coordinating with native officers to make sure continuity of care,” she says. “By the point the storm passes, we’re already on-site, able to function cell medical items and non permanent clinics.”

The primary 30 to 60 days following a catastrophe are essential. Throughout this time, native hospitals and pharmacies are sometimes broken or inaccessible. CDR Well being steps in to offer main and pressing care, pharmacy, and prescription renewals, and public well being help to residents who would in any other case go with out care.

“For a lot of sufferers, the difficulty is not only storm accidents, it is that their physician’s workplace is gone,” Vidal-Duart explains. “We’re there for the one who wants insulin, coronary heart medicine, or wound therapy when each close by clinic is closed.”

The corporate’s clinicians additionally deal with the secondary wave of accidents that observe disasters, chainsaw cuts, falls, infections, and dehydration. “Individuals underestimate how harmful the cleanup section might be,” she says. “We deal with the aftermath, the hidden toll that comes as soon as the headlines fade.”

Past disasters, CDR Well being gives refugee and migrant healthcare via authorities contracts, providing screenings, immunizations, and ongoing medical administration to weak populations. It additionally operates homebound and rural healthcare applications, extending medical entry to communities which might be underserved even in regular instances.

“Our mission is about fairness,” Vidal-Duart says. “Whether or not you reside in a metropolis or on the sting of a wildfire zone, you deserve constant, high-quality care.”

To maintain such attain, CDR Well being maintains a core workforce of licensed healthcare professionals and leverages a nationwide roster of contract clinicians who might be activated inside hours. The corporate’s operational energy lies in its coordination with CDR Corporations’ different divisions, notably engineering and emergency administration, to construct and equip cell clinics, shelters, and help infrastructure within the discipline.

“We now have the benefit of being a part of a household of corporations that may actually construct what we’d like,” Vidal-Duart notes. “If we require a clinic in a car parking zone inside 48 hours, our specialised groups could make that occur.”

That built-in mannequin permits CDR Well being to behave rapidly and scale effectively, serving catastrophe victims, first responders, long-term restoration groups, and native governments searching for sustainable options.

Finally, Vidal-Duart views CDR Well being as a healthcare supplier and restoration accomplice. “When somebody’s world has been turned the other way up, we wish to be the calm within the chaos,” she says. “We attempt to avoid wasting lives and assist folks rebuild them.”

From the ashes of wildfires to the flooded streets of hurricane zones, CDR Well being continues to face on the frontlines of disaster response, an unwavering presence the place healthcare meets humanity.