Community Resilience & Capability Building
Strong communities are built long before a crisis occurs. Through education, prevention, and collaborative partnerships, Transitional Intelligence Command (TIC) works to strengthen public resilience by helping individuals, organizations, and communities better understand emerging risks, navigate complex challenges, and build practical capabilities for the future.
Image Credit: Jared Craigg
Death Crisis Response Team Model & Development
Death Crisis Response Teams are another emerging model designed to strengthen multidisciplinary responses following sudden, traumatic, or complex deaths particularly in reference to suicides, homicides, overdose deaths, or pregnancy and infant loss.
Depending on model and circumstances, the team is designed to be housed within the coroners or medical examiner’s office and deploy alongside police officers, EMS, fire departments, or other first responders.
The team itself might consist of:
Licensed therapist or social worker
Death doula or grief specialist
Victim advocate or peer survivor volunteer
Chaplain or spiritual care provider (optional)
On-Scene Functions
Sit with family members
Contact relatives and support persons and assist with death notifications when appropriate
Assist with childcare or pet arrangements
Help identify funeral homes if none are pre-selected
Coordinate transportation
Help support emotional stabilization
Help families understand next steps and offer culturally appropriate support
The team would go on to support the following:
Follow-up Phase (ideally 24-72 hours)
Welfare checks
Resource navigation
Funeral assistance referrals
Follow-up Phase (ideally 1-4 weeks)
Grief and survivor support groups
Therapy referrals
Estate and paperwork navigation (advance directives, living wills, POLST forms, organ donation wishes, military honors requests, religious and cultural preferences)
Digital and legacy matters (education on locating digital records, memorializing or closing social media accounts, online subscriptions, digital assets, cell phone accounts, photo preservation, and other digital estate planning education)
Benefits Assistance
Safety planning
First Responder Benefit
Besides reducing the burden on first responders via workload, the death crisis response team could also work with first responder agencies to provide:
Occupational grief and vicarious trauma support
PTSD education and resources
Peer support referrals
Community Resilience
The Death Crisis Response Teams would also be designed to provide community education around the following:
Understanding the Dying Process: physical signs of dying, what families can expect, caring for caregivers
Suicide Prevention and Postvention: Warning signs, navigating suicidal ideation, mental health education, reducing stigma, safety planning, supporting survivors of suicide loss, community resources
End-of-Life Planning: advance directives, living wills, medical power of attorney, funeral and burial preferences, organ donation, religious and cultural considerations
Digital Legacy and Estate Planning: Passwords, social media memorialization, digital assets, ghost fraud & identity theft after death, protecting grieving families from scams
What Happens After Death: Coroner and medical examiner processes, death certificates, funeral homes, probate and practical next steps
Grief & Bereavement: Types of grief, supporting grieving children, supporting partners and friends, grief during holidays and anniversaries
Community Crisis and Disaster Preparedness: mass casualty events, natural disasters, family emergency plans, community resilience after tragedy
Perinatal Crisis Response Team Model & Development
The emerging model integrates behavioral health, perinatal expertise, emergency response, and crisis intervention to improve coordinated responses to maternal and perinatal crises while strengthening collaboration between healthcare and public safety systems. Perinatal crisis could be perinatal mental health (perinatal depression, perinatal psychosis, perinatal PTSD, perinatal anxiety, etc.), pregnancy or infant loss (miscarriage, stillbirth, neonatal death, and fetal death diagnosis), or other maternal emergencies, inclusive of perinatal trauma events, such as perinatal intimate partner violence.
Depending on model and circumstances, the team is designed to be housed within the county EMS department or local hospital and deploy alongside EMS, police officers, fire departments, or other first responders.
The team itself might consist of:
Licensed therapist or social worker
Birth or full spectrum doula
EMS Professional trained in this model as primary first responder, police officer trainer in this model as secondary first responder (dependent upon scenario)
Chaplain or spiritual care provider (optional)
On-Scene Functions:
Help support emotional stabilization
Suicide risk identification and navigation
Supporting family members
Connecting to mental health and grief resources
Coordinating with EMS and hospitals, and law enforcement or DFCS when necessary
Contacting support persons and assisting with childcare coordination
Follow-up Phase (ideally 1-4 weeks)
Grief and survivor support groups
PMAD referrals
Lactation support
Partner & child support services
Family adjustment
Memorial resources
First Responder Benefit
Besides reducing the burden on first responders via workload, the perinatal crisis response team could also work with first responder agencies to provide:
Occupational grief and vicarious trauma support
PTSD education and resources
Peer support referrals
Community Resilience
The Perinatal Crisis Response Teams would also be designed to provide community education around the following:
Perinatal Mental Health: PMADs, suicide awareness, recognizing birth trauma, paternal mental health and partner support, perinatal crisis education
Pregnancy Loss: miscarriage & infant loss education, PMADs, supporting grieving families, memorial-making
Childbirth Education: Fertility support, high-risk pregnancies, birth & labor support, abortion support, partner support, lactation education, postpartum support, newborn care, pregnancy & infant loss education
Perinatal Crisis Education: When to call EMS, warning signs, high-risk pregnancies, postpartum complications
Community Perinatal Education: Intimate partner violence & safety, navigating unhoused systems while pregnant, perinatal substance use, navigating trafficking systems while pregnant or postpartum,
Digital Privacy: Pregnancy apps, medical privacy, navigating pregnancy criminalization systems, child digital footprints
Healthcare Professionals & Doula Education: Recognizing perinatal crisis, recognizing perinatal trauma, navigating legal systems & DFCS cases, supporting marginalized communities
Perinatal Community Crisis & Disaster Preparedness: Emergency birth kits, natural disaster preparedness, evacuation planning, medication planning
Digital Safety Collaboratives
Digital Safety Collaboratives are new emerging models developed in partnership with libraries and community organizations. Digital Safety Collaboratives focus on prevention and education to provide accessible guidance on a variety of digital topics.
Areas of focus for self-protection may include:
Digital self-care & privacy
Scam awareness and prevention
Cyberstalking and online harassment
Identity theft
Open-source intelligence awareness
Digital estate & ghost fraud preparedness
Resource navigation and community referrals
Areas of focus for community-protection may include:
AI Literacy: Defining artificial intelligence, AI misinformation, AI hallucinations, deepfakes, AI-generated scams, and AI in schools and workplaces, privacy concerns & ethical considerations
AI & Employment: Jobs likely to change, workforce adaptation, upskilling, human-centered careers, ethical considerations
AI & Healthcare: AI in hospitals, medical privacy, algorithmic bias, privacy concerns & ethical considerations
AI & Public Safety: Facial recognition surveillance, predictive technologies, privacy concerns & ethical considerations
Data center awareness: Defining data centers, water usage, energy consumption, economic impact, critical infrastructure considerations, contemporary & future considerations
Digital Community Preparedness: Preparation for Internet outages, cyberattacks, severance of emergency communications
Regional Unhoused Mortality Intelligence Mapping Project
The Regional Unhoused Mortality Intelligence System applies Transitional Intelligence to better understand patterns surrounding deaths among unhoused populations.
As it stands currently, there is no official protocol for tracking unhoused deaths, and many bodies remain unclaimed. The goal of this work is to work toward a more unified procedure for tracking unhoused deaths.
The project examines regional trends, environmental factors, service gaps, operational challenges, and institutional opportunities to strengthen prevention efforts, improve collaboration, and support evidence-informed decision-making.
The system may incorporate operational intelligence, geospatial analysis, community partnerships, mortality trend analysis, environmental observation, and systems-level recommendations.
This is structured by mapping unhoused categories (confirmed, probable, and housing insecure/unknown), mapping the place of death with GPS coordinates if known (streets, encampments, motels, parks, etc.), agencies involved (police, EMS, fire, coroner or medical examiner), cause of death, body transportation path, and disposition (claimed by family, county cemetery, cremation, unclaimed remains storage, etc.).
This project, created to design a system focused not only on how unhoused people die, but also where they go afterward, would fill a significant gap in public health, forensic anthropology, and mortality intelligence. It could also assist in creating a better nationwide system in tracking a population after death that often goes unnoticed.
The TIC Virtual Community Academy (Launching in 2027)
Monthly virtual courses range from three to eight hours in length and combine practical knowledge with real-world applications across crisis response, behavioral health, digital security, operational preparedness, mortality systems, and emerging intelligence topics.
Course offerings may include:
Crisis Response for Perinatal Professionals
Crisis Response for Death Professionals
Autistic & ADHD Crisis Response
First Responder Grief, Trauma & Suicide Prevention
Intro to Digital Security, Digital Self-Care & Digital Safety Collaboratives
Transitional Preparedness for Natural Disasters
Navigating Behavioral Health Crises
Understanding Hacker Culture, the Dark Web & Open-Source Intelligence
Digital Estate Preparedness, Digital Privacy After Death, Data Exploitation of Grieving Families & Ghost Fraud
Space & Extreme Environment Crisis Intelligence
Transitional Intelligence for Everyday Life