About ERHPL

Dedicated to promoting health and safety for fire, EMS, and law enforcement through research and education…

Mission: Emergency Responder Human Performance Lab (ERHPL), is dedicated to conducting research to develop and improve guidelines and operational practices for the health and safety of emergency responders.  We seek to improve performance and safety during firefighting, hazardous material incidents, and emergencies resulting from chemical, biological, and radiological agents by improving knowledge and understanding of the physiological stresses that accompany work in various forms of personal protective equipment.

ERHPL faculty and students work to accomplish this mission through research, education, and application.

Research: Multidisciplinary research is key to improving first responder health and safety.  ERHPL has adopted an integrative physiology approach where the end user defines the questions.  In all cases, we will safely work to describe the problem and investigate solutions through human subject research.  When necessary, animal models and biochemical approaches will be used to investigate disease mechanisms and potential therapeutic targets.  Our current research priorities include 1) improving health and safety, 2) prevention of cardiovascular disease, and 3) performance enhancement.

Education: Research has limited value unless it is disseminated to the end-user.  To accomplish this goal, ERHPL has a local and national presence providing educational programming to first responders. We maintain an updated website describing our current research and previous projects/outcomes.

Application: ERHPL is committed to distilling all applicable research to create guidelines for first responder operations.  We are also committed to providing fitness and nutrition information relevant to first responders. ERHPL also work to maximize the use of current technology and investigate/develop future technology to improve first responder safety.