Gaithersburg, Md.
March 1, 2003

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I am delighted to welcome all of you and to be able to share this time with you today.  I think I may be as excited about the Ready Responders as you are, because I was present at the creation of your group.  It is remarkably rewarding to see the fruit of our efforts represented by your presence today.  Many people at HRSA have worked long hours over a long period to see our vision become reality.  Let me here give special thanks to Don Weaver and David Rutstein of the National Health Service Corps. 
 
You come to us with special skills and a dedication to serving those among us who need your talents the most.  With the training you are about to undergo over the next two weeks, we intend to augment those skills and make of you an elite cadre of health care professionals within the federal government.
 
The training will be challenging.  It will be intense.   And it will make the Ready Responders among the best-prepared commissioned officers in the U.S. Public Health Service.  No less an expert than the Surgeon General, Dr. Richard Carmona, told me that.
 
The idea for the creation of the Ready Responders was born in the terrible hours following the 9-11 attacks on New York and Washington.  The entire nation was surprised by the savagery of the attacks.  The scale of the terror – and our growing awareness of biological and chemical threats we also face -- forced us in the federal government to re-evaluate our strategies for deterring attacks and for responding to them if they occur.
 
Employees from HRSA and our sister federal agencies who were sent to New York, to the Pentagon, and to the crash site in Pennsylvania reacted heroically to the disasters.  And the existing National Disaster Medical System, which had been established to respond to these types of calamities, also worked well.
 
But in the weeks and months after the attacks, we at HRSA began to investigate how we could improve our response to disasters in any corner of the nation.  And we wanted to coordinate that effort with HRSA’s ongoing push to provide more direct health care to our neediest fellow Americans.
 
Fortunately, HRSA already had a structure in place to get health care professionals to areas of greatest need – the National Health Service Corps.  We just needed a new framework that would enable us to rush clinicians to regional or national disasters, whether natural in source or induced by the cruel natures of those who hate freedom.
 
And that is why we developed the Ready Responders.  Like other NHSC clinicians, you have dedicated your talents to delivering quality health care to underserved populations.  But as members of the Commissioned Corps and employees of HRSA, you have made an extra commitment to train and stand ready to respond to our nation’s call in times of emergency.
 
To our mind, everyone who touches the Ready Responders benefits from your decision to join HRSA’s mission:
 

• Hospitals, health centers and clinics in the most underserved parts of the country get free health care professionals on site.
• HRSA puts more health professionals in direct service to America, without increasing our budget.
• You Ready Responders gain invaluable new training and expand your professional capabilities.
• And the nation is assured that its government can respond to the worst possible events by sending in the best-trained, most-qualified health care experts available anywhere.

We pray, of course, that the disaster preparedness training you are about to receive will never need to be tested.  But America will be more secure, more confident and better able to confront the challenges of the 21^st century because you will have it.
 
I thank you for your willingness to embark on this great new adventure, and I thank you for your service to America.  Good luck to all of you.