Photo By Staff Sgt. Kevin Schulze | Servicemembers prepare to board a C130 before airlifting to the island of Molokai for...... read more read more
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PUUNENE, Hawaii—About 350 members of the Air National Guard, Air Force, Army, Navy Reserve, and Marine Corps Reserve are taking part in Tropic Care Maui County 2018, a Department of Defense Innovative Readiness Training mission to provide no-cost medical, dental, and vision services to people in Maui, Molokai, and Lanai from August 11-19.
“I’m very excited about getting ready to kick off [the mission] here,” said Lt. Col. James Jones of the Alabama Air National Guard’s 187th Medical Group, the officer in charge for the Tropic Care mission, as he briefed about 50 military members who gathered for a briefing at the PFC Anthony T. Kaho’ohanohano National Guard Armory in Puunene on August 8. While military training activities tend to be simulated, Innovative Readiness Training has the advantage of “real-world, hands-on training,” he said.
The mission will take place over nine days, but it is the culmination of ten months of intensive planning. Leaders recruited points of contact for a variety of tasks, from public health to transportation to communications. They appointed officers in charge, assistant officers in charge, and non-commissioned officers in charge for each of the six sites. IRT planners met for an initial planning meeting in November 2017, followed by regular conference calls as well as a final planning meeting in June.
“We started off slow,” said Senior Chief Petty Officer Simon Hernandez, the senior enlisted leader for Navy Reserve Expeditionary Medical Facility Dallas and the mission non-commissioned officer in charge. It took time to identify military and civilian resources and to get members from multiple services “to speak the same language,” he said.
1st Lt. Amanda Norton of the Vermont Air National Guard’s 158th Medical Group, the Air National Guard assistant officer in charge for the mission, recalled a preliminary meeting in 2017 looking ahead at Tropic Care Maui County. “We left with so many questions,” she said. Then, when Norton visited Maui for the initial planning meeting, she took inspiration from the enthusiasm of community leaders on the island. “It was cool at the initial planning meeting to see how excited everyone was,” she said.
Planners consulted after action reports from previous IRT missions, considering best practices and lessons learned from past experience. Maj. Thomas Lanigan, a personnel officer in the Oregon Air National Guard’s 173rd Fighter Wing and the mission support officer for Tropic Care Maui County, said that he spent time “drawing upon a lot of mission planning from the real world” as well as his own military training as he planned the bed-down and feeding plan for seven sites in the islands. “A lot of things I learned in my core training paid off,” he said.
Once service members began to take on various planning jobs, the pieces began to fall into place. Organizing the IRT took “a lot of time and a lot of coordination, especially with other units across different states and different time zones,” said Senior Master Sgt. Georgia Powell of the Vermont Air National Guard’s 158th Medical Group, who coordinated the mission manning document, working to fill position openings and facilitating collaboration among personnel. It meant “putting people in the right spot and making sure people were working together with other people.”
Lt. Cmdr. Maricela Soberanes of Navy Reserve Expeditionary Medical Facility Dallas, the assistant officer in charge for the Tropic Care mission, noted the “hard work from all of the services” leading up to the mission. She commended mission planners for their willingness to sacrifice time they could have spent on family and civilian work commitments during the planning phase. Participants are “mission-minded,” and they have contributed “their knowledge, experience, creativity, and collaboration,” she said.
Section and site leaders reported to Maui on August 5 to finalize preparations for the main body of service members to arrive in the islands. They discussed remaining logistical issues, set up bed-down areas, and began to set up work spaces.
A few days before most members were to arrive for the mission, Hurricane Hector was moving through the Pacific, with the possibility of impacting the islands. IRT leaders came up with a risk management plan and delayed travel for most IRT participants from August 8 to August 9. IRT organizers and unit travel managers acted quickly and made changes. By the afternoon of August 9, personnel were in-processing at the 292nd Combat Communications Squadron in Kahului and listening to orientation briefings before moving out to bed-down sites to rest up before a day of work getting ready for patients.
“We are mission ready, and we are going to get this done,” said Soberanes.
| Date Taken: | 08.14.2018 |
| Date Posted: | 08.15.2018 05:26 |
| Story ID: | 288798 |
| Location: | PUUNENE, HI, US |
| Web Views: | 224 |
| Downloads: | 1 |
This work, Months of planning led up to Tropic Care health training mission, by Capt. Hans Zeiger, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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