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Medical Reserve Corps Volunteers Serve and Connect

It’s 2:37 a.m. when the phone wakes you in your Brooklyn apartment. An urgent message from New York City’s voluntary Medical Reserve Corps (MRC) unit asks you to report to the nearest of the city’s 24 points of dispensing by 6 a.m. – prepared to spend days there in case quarantine restricts your movement. Your mission: To help vaccinate 300,000 frightened residents against a smallpox outbreak confirmed just hours ago.

You might not have envisioned that scenario or countless other public health emergencies that could cause your unit to be activated. But that’s what people like you sign up for when they join the MRC, a loose federal coalition of local organizations of volunteer healthcare workers and laypeople who have agreed to aid their communities – or occasionally another US region – in crisis and help augment a public health system that may be overloaded.

What Is the Medical Reserve Corps?
What Do MRC Volunteers Do?
How Can MRC Service Boost Healthcare Careers?