Battling COVID-19 Family Affair for DHEC EMS Director

by   |   [email protected]   |  

I am both grateful and humbled by the place that the Lord has placed my family during this national public health emergency. I am a BJA grad (’77) and privileged to be a three-time BJU grad (1981, 2009 and 2013).

I began working for the State of South Carolina right about the time I was defending my dissertation at BJU in 2013. For the last seven years, I have served as the State Director of Emergency Medical Services for the Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC). My job is to oversee EMS in South Carolina, coordinate the State EMS resources, write the state EMS protocols, and work with our state and federal healthcare partners. I have been working out of the DHEC Agency Command Center in Columbia, SC since the beginning of the declared emergency in the first days of March. I have written our current state EMS guidelines and protocols for our field EMTs’ and paramedics’ response to COVID-19 patients while keeping them safe.

Having served as a paramedic myself for 28 years in the field, my heart is still with our folks in the streets that serve every day including my son-in-law Alex Bowers who works for Pickens County EMS as a paramedic. His wife, my daughter Kate (Alier) Bowers, is an RN at Prisma Baptist Easley Hospital working both in the ICU and ER during this public health emergency. Kate is a BJA grad (2006). She became a paramedic in 2008 and then after five years went on to become an RN.

My daughter-in-law Janelle (Brubaker) Alier is a BJU RN grad (2006) and has worked with Prisma Greenville Hospital System for over 10 years. She is now an APRN Midwife with her own practice. She has been making house calls to keep mothers and newborns healthy and safe at home. In the last two weeks, she has delivered two babies in their homes. While this is remarkable enough, Janelle is seven and a half months pregnant herself.

We are blessed as a family that the Lord has placed us in the Kingdom for such a time as this.

Arnold Alier
Class of ’81

Share: