Sara Dolan, PhD, along with her co-leader colleague Jim Ellor, PhD, created the Psychological Intervention Team as a part of the Medical Reserve Corp (MRC) at the Waco/McLennan County Health Department. The MRC was made necessary in the wake of Hurricane Katrina because faculty and advanced students in psychology, social work and counseling were unable to engage in emotional support of persons in the shelters created in their area as there was no pre-established team or training.
Dolan is the co-leader of the Waco-McLennan County Medical Reserve Corps, a local branch of the U.S. Citizen Corps, which was established by local organizations to meet the public health needs of their communities. Dolan serves as a leader of the Psychosocial Intervention Team, which provides behavioral health support in times of disaster or crisis. She provides annual trainings in psychological first aid for students at Baylor University and for other mental health providers in the Central Texas area. In her MRC role, Dolan consults with the Waco-McLennan County Public Health District and emergency preparedness coordinator, providing behavioral health support and consultation during live disaster role-play exercises.
In April 2013, a fertilizer plant in West, Texas, exploded, killing 14 citizens and first responders and destroying 40% of the homes in their community within 30 seconds. Dolan responded to the behavioral health needs of the community and first responder survivors in both the acute and long-term recovery phases of this disaster. She recruited, trained and deployed a team of psychologists and other mental health providers to provide mental health assistance for the community. She worked with the local mental health authority to respond to individuals and groups of people with acute psychological needs, providing crisis intervention and referrals to care. She assisted with standing up and managing a family assistance center for reunification of families who were separated during the crisis and for death notifications. They were called by incident command to assist with their efforts to reintegrate citizens to their homes after all structures were inspected and deemed safe. They were also called to perform critical incident stress debriefings for various first responder groups, including emergency medical services, who incurred the brunt of the deaths in this incident. For these efforts, Dolan and Ellor were the first mental health professionals to win the Jack Colley Citizen Corps Leadership Award, a statewide award given annually to disaster responders who demonstrated great leadership, an honor usually presented to police, fire, EMS or emergency preparedness professionals.
Dolan earned her PhD from the University of Iowa, in clinical psychology. She is currently the graduate program director of the clinical psychology (Psy.D) program in the department of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University. Her scholarship focuses on combat veterans, trauma and substance use disorders. She is a member of APA and Divisions 12, 40 and 50.