The New Toolbelt: Equipping Public Safety Responders with the Tools for Health and Wellness
October 21, 2026
Time: 11:00 AM ET | 10:00 AM CT | 8:00 AM PT
Duration: 30 minutes
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Summary
Public safety professionals carry a toolbelt built to handle the job but are offered few tools to help themselves. In a career field facing extreme operational and organizational stressors, there are few consolidated efforts to equip each responder with individual tools for stress relief. In this session, Dr. Michael Whittington will introduce Columbia Southern University's new Public Safety Health and Wellness concentration and certificate, developed collaboratively across CSU's Criminal Justice, Forensics, Emergency Management, Homeland Security, and Fire programs with direct input from practitioner-faculty and advisory board members working in the field. Attendees will learn how the curriculum equips students and current public safety professionals with a practical set of tools ranging from emotional intelligence, to stress management and resilience, to physical, mental, and financial health, to post-traumatic growth, and how these tools can be applied directly within an agency or department to support personnel before, during, and after their careers.
What attendees will learn:
- Why academic health and wellness courses are the new priority in public safety education, including a focus on the toll the profession takes across military, law enforcement, fire, and EMS personnel.
- How CSU built this concentration through direct collaboration with practitioner-faculty and advisory board members across five academic programs.
- The structure of the concentration's core courses, covering emotional intelligence, stress and resilience, comprehensive physical/mental/financial wellness, and a capstone seminar built around post-traumatic growth.
- How concepts like peer support, leadership's role in reducing stigma, and wellness program design can be applied practically within any public safety organization.
Speaker
Dr. Michael Whittington
Faculty Member - Criminal Justice & Homeland Security
Columbia Southern University
Dr. Michael Whittington is a faculty member in Criminal Justice and Homeland Security at Columbia Southern University and serves as Chair for the university's Doctorate in Emergency Management. His passion is teaching mental health and wellness to law enforcement entities throughout the country. He is a guest speaker at the FBI National Academy as well as an international speaker on building wellness programs. He holds a Ph.D., an MBA, and is a graduate of the FBI National Academy (Session 285) as well as the California Command College (Class 73). Dr. Whittington's law enforcement career includes experience with the San Jose Police Department, and he currently serves as a Supervising Criminal Investigator at a District Attorney's Office in California. Through CSU, he partners with the FBI-LEEDA Curriculum Advisory Council to help shape leadership training for law enforcement executives nationwide, is co-author of a published study, "Influence of Professional and Personal Issues in Police Officers' Utilization of Stress Relief Programs," and regularly teaches his "Building the Resilient Agency" curriculum to police departments and sheriffs' offices across the country.
