Breaking New Ground: Joffe Forms the Event Industry’s First Privately Held Interdisciplinary Safety Committee

From concerts to conferences, tens of thousands of health and medical incidents occur each year during private events. But as a national industry, we’ve lacked a systematic way to monitor and track them. We know the number and types of medical incidents during a mud run is likely to be vastly different from that of an academic conference, but our current scattered data leaves event operators without clear guidance, often scrambling to determine the best way to plan their medical staffing for events. With the uptick in higher acuity medical incidents occurring at events in recent years this data challenge has real world impacts, and has become an urgent safety challenge. 

At Joffe, we recently took action to address this challenge through the formation of the Joffe Safety Committee. The Joffe Safety Committee is a group of 12 dedicated safety and medical professionals charged with developing the nation’s first-ever standardized, but responsive, staffing guidelines for private events. The final guidelines will include optimal staffing ratios based on a dedicated set of quality assurance standards for a variety of event types throughout venues and field locations. The Safety Committee is the first of its kind, and it’s designed to bring expertise and focus to fill the void in the private industry that has led to severe consequences, including injuries and fatalities during events. 

The committee was officially formed in April of 2022. The members (listed below) have met quarterly since the committee launched to draft and develop its standardized safety guidelines. The guidelines and other tools and resources we’re seeking to develop for event operators will become publicly accessible by the end of 2023. We strongly believe that having this group of dedicated and talented professionals focused on this issue will create a shift that will be felt in every corner of the private event industry. 

Current members of the Joffe Safety Committee include:

• Alex Soltero, National Director of Event Safety, Joffe Emergency Services
• Evan Carey, Senior Fire Inspector within the southern California region since 2015
• Ashley Codd, an emergency medical services field responder. She has been with Joffe for just over a year.
• Rachel Collins, an emergency medical services field responder and Event Safety Manager. She has been with Joffe since 2017 and runs a team of over 200 EMT’s in events all around the country.
• Timothy (Tim) Colunga, an emergency medical services field responder for over 17 years and EMS trainer. He is a certified AHA CPR instructor, and currently holds a position as an Operations Manager for a local ambulance provider. Tim moonlights shifts with Joffe Emergency Services as an EMT Supervisor
• Bob Daniels, Fire Captain / Paramedic serving a major west coast Fire Department for over 36 years
• Attorney David Givot, founder of EMS QI Partners and nationally known speaker on the topic of EMS Law and Defense
• Wayne Middleton, CVE, an internationally recognized expert in risk management for public venues and events, with thirty-five years of experience as both a venue operator and risk management consultant
• Dr. Bryan Pezeshki, faculty member in the Department of Emergency Medicine at LAC+USC
• Lyn Riley, M Ed, BS, RN, MICN, Clinical Care Coordinator for the LASD Air 5 Medevac Program
• Dana Swander, a Firefighter Paramedic for the last 33 years and an Instructor Coordinator, teaching basic and Advanced EMT programs and CPR/First Aid classes
• Roy Yoo, Lieutenant with a major west coast Police Department

We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to bring this talented and ambitious group together. As we continue our work, we’re excited to continue to share the progress and product of our work to benefit event planners and attendees nationwide.