{"id":472463,"date":"2026-02-16T19:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T19:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/472463\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T19:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T19:18:09","slug":"anchorages-growing-mobile-health-programs-take-pressure-off-first-responders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/472463\/","title":{"rendered":"Anchorage\u2019s growing mobile health programs take pressure off first responders"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Anchorage Fire Department clinical supervisor Jennifer Pierce speaks with people in a home to follow up and assess concerns on Feb. 11, the day after a person was transported to the hospital. (Marc Lester \/ ADN) <\/p>\n

Jennifer Pierce rapped on the mobile home\u2019s front door. The man who ushered her inside had called 911 for his brother the night prior for a suspected stroke. Pierce, a mental health clinician with the Anchorage Fire Department, had returned on Wednesday to check on the family left behind.<\/p>\n

A woman in her 90s sat in a rocking chair in the living room with a blanket in her lap. Pierce kneeled down to address her: Who had been doing the cooking? Had she seen a primary care doctor recently? Was her breathing machine cleaned regularly? <\/p>\n

Pierce leads a one-year pilot project within the fire department called Community, Outreach, Referral and Education, or CORE. The two-person crew, consisting of a licensed mental health provider and a paramedic, works to reduce repeat 911 calls and connect vulnerable residents to health care and substance use treatment services. <\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re kind of getting stuck in the system,\u201d Pierce said. \u201cThey\u2019re going to the emergency room because something\u2019s being missed.\u201d <\/p>\n

The team has already experienced success by meeting community members\u2019 needs at home rather than in the hospital and will soon expand the program in March. In the first two weeks, Pierce said she had received more than 20 referrals for the pilot project. <\/p>\n

The CORE team\u2019s daily appointment list is based on referrals from emergency medical services crew members who have become too familiar with frequent 911 callers, some who ring as often as three times a month, Pierce said. The callers often have complex needs. Instead of a bed in the emergency room, these residents often need extra help scheduling or making it to medical appointments or accessing a higher level of care, such as assisted living. Others, while not in immediate crisis, need additional mental health resources. <\/p>\n

Many people call 911 because they don\u2019t know what to do and it\u2019s their \u201clast line of defense,\u201d said Joshua Browning, Pierce\u2019s paramedic partner on the CORE team. <\/p>\n

\"\"Anchorage Fire Department\u2019s Josh Browning, a firefighter-paramedic, and Jennifer Pierce, a clinical supervisor, visit a home in South Anchorage on Feb. 11. Browning and Pierce make up the Community Outreach Referral and Education Team, or CORE Team. (Marc Lester \/ ADN) <\/p>\n

On Wednesday morning, Browning spent four hours sitting in a primary care office with a resident who had been bouncing in and out of emergency rooms and would need hernia surgery. By 2 p.m., the pair drove to their third home visit, an older adult suffering from chronic chest pains.<\/p>\n

Pilot program relaunched<\/p>\n

Over the past decade, 911 call volumes in Anchorage have climbed. <\/p>\n

This includes a number of incidents paramedics and firefighters felt they were not the right resource or lacked proper training for, said Michael Riley, one of the original founders of CORE. Yet, for many years, no other options were available, he said. <\/p>\n

The municipality originally launched the CORE program in 2018 to fill in gaps that had become visible when some residents, unsure of how to utilize the medical system, called 911 for transport and not necessarily an emergency, Riley said. The department also received thousands of calls for mental health crises, prompting the creation of the Mobile Crisis Team in 2021<\/a>. <\/p>\n

CORE dissolved in 2021 after running out of grant money, and AFD\u2019s focus shifted to funding the Mobile Crisis Team. CORE kicked off again this month with a $175,000 grant from the state, but its absence over the past few years has been palpable, Riley said.<\/p>\n

Non-emergency or \u201clow acuity\u201d calls put pressure on emergency rooms, as well as the capacity of a fire department already under strain. \u201cBasic life support\u201d calls between 2014 and 2024 have risen by nearly 40%, Fire Chief Douglas Schrage said during a Public Health and Safety Committee meeting in November. <\/p>\n

\"\"Anchorage Fire Department\u2019s Jennifer Pierce, a clinical supervisor, and Josh Browning, a firefighter-paramedic, visit a residential assisted living home in Anchorage on Feb. 11. (Marc Lester \/ ADN) <\/p>\n

Low-acuity calls make up a larger share of the overall call volume, he said, part of a trend across the country where residents choose to call 911 instead of going to a physician or a hospital themselves. Contributing factors may be that fewer people have insurance or gaps exist in the \u201ccontinuums of care available in the community,\u201d Schrage said. <\/p>\n

Prior to existence of programs like CORE and the Mobile Crisis Team, callers had two options when ambulances and firetrucks arrived: go to the hospital or stay home. As the needs of the community changed, members of the fire department wanted to find different ways to meet them, said Pierce, who manages both of AFD\u2019s programs. The Mobile Crisis Team, although one of the busiest rigs in the city according to Browning, was only part of the answer. <\/p>\n

Advocating across Alaska<\/p>\n

The CORE program is part of Alaska\u2019s growing web of \u201cmobile integrated health,\u201d or MIH, programs, present in Anchorage, as well as communities such as Juneau and Ketchikan. <\/p>\n

The programs address the gaps that occur between an emergency and subsequent follow-up with a doctor, said Juneau MIH Program Director Josh Jubb. These breaks in the system have always existed for patients but have gotten larger for a \u201cmenagerie of reasons,\u201d from the cost of and one\u2019s ability to obtain health insurance to mental health disorders and substance use, he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s just a lapse, that pathway doesn\u2019t work for many, many people,\u201d Jubb said. <\/p>\n

The Anchorage pilot project has provided an opportunity to \u201clook behind the curtain\u201d at a disjointed health care system that is often challenging for people to navigate, regardless of their age or health, Browning said. <\/p>\n

Tuesday through Friday, Pierce\u2019s office at the Anchorage Fire Training Center in Airport Heights is typically empty. She works out of a gray Ford Explorer, a computer balanced in her lap in between at-home visits where health care options are discussed in living rooms and at kitchen tables. <\/p>\n

At residents\u2019 homes, Pierce said she looks for clues that may help prevent the next 911 call. <\/p>\n

\"\"Anchorage Fire Department\u2019s Josh Browning, a firefighter-paramedic, and Jennifer Pierce, a clinical supervisor, visit a residential assisted living home on Feb. 11. (Marc Lester \/ ADN) <\/p>\n

Through the first iteration of CORE, she worked with a woman in 2020 who struggled to manage her diabetes and mental health. While she claimed to take her medications, when Pierce visited she found the woman\u2019s blood sugar was extremely high and her medications were scattered across a cluttered house in places difficult to find. <\/p>\n

\u201cYou could just see the struggle when we\u2019re there in the home,\u201d Pierce said. \u201cThen we could advocate for her.\u201d <\/p>\n

In March, the CORE team will begin accepting opioid response referrals. When EMS responds to an overdose, first responders typically administer the drug naloxone, often referred to by the brand name Narcan. While it can save someone\u2019s life, it also sends them into withdrawals. <\/p>\n

With the new program, members of the CORE team will have the option to administer a medication called buprenorphine. It offers relief from withdrawal symptoms that increase the chances a person keeps using instead of seeking help, said Josh Engle, crisis services program manager at True North Recovery in Wasilla. It\u2019s one of the local providers the CORE program could hand off a patient to. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat window of opportunity you have with somebody that\u2019s struggling with substance use is very small,\u201d Engle said. \u201cWith this type of program, you potentially have the ability to make (it) a little bigger.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anchorage Fire Department clinical supervisor Jennifer Pierce speaks with people in a home to follow up and assess…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":472464,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[219163,219164,219165,97,252,253],"class_list":["post-472463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-anchorage-fire-department","tag-community-outreach-referral-and-education-team","tag-core-team","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=472463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/472463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/472464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=472463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=472463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=472463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}