Welcome to the Community Paramedic Program Web site. We hope you take time to learn more about an innovative program with the potential to improve the health of millions living in rural and remote regions of the United States and around the world.

It's a simple concept: Connect underutilized resources to underserved populations. In this case, we're expanding the roles of EMS workers to provide health services where access to physicians, clinics and/or hospitals is difficult or may not exist.

The Community Paramedic Program is organic. It exists for the sole purpose of serving the needs of a particular community. Its success relies heavily on collaboration among local stakeholders:

the people who live or travel in medically underserved rural and remote locales;

elected officials whose charge it is to maintain the physical and fiscal health of a community;

health department officials, clinic and hospital administrators, who assess needs and manage resources in order to provide the range of services to meet those needs.

Last but not least, colleges and universities that train our nation's first responders are core to the Community Paramedic Program.

Similar initiatives in the United States and around the world have generated remarkable results. We visited many of them. Today's Community Paramedic Program combines all of the best practices and lessons learned from these programs.