THE Re-Search TOOL
Re-Search
Your direct line to the science that supports our fire and EMS communities.
Re-Search helps you find research that matters. Whether you're looking for studies on firefighter health, operational safety, behavioral health, or any topic impacting our field, one search checks our own resources and PubMed, the U.S. National Library of Medicine's database of peer-reviewed medical research, at the same time.
Every study shown is about firefighters and EMS providers themselves: their health, safety, and wellness. Studies that only mention responders in passing, like research on the patients they care for, are left out. Preprints and other unpublished work are not included.
Use it to:
- Find Science to the Station resources and research translations on your topic
- Access peer-reviewed studies relevant to your work
- Stay informed on the latest findings that can inform policy and practice
- Pull citations for a grant application, training program, or your department's health initiatives
Our goal is to make science accessible and actionable. Whether you're a responder, researcher, educator, or leader, this is your starting point.
How to Use Re-Search
- Enter a topic. Try sleep, cancer, PFAS, or injury prevention. You don't need to add "firefighter" or "EMS." The tool already does that for you.
- Or start with a preset. Tap one of the topic buttons to jumpstart your search.
- Narrow it down. Limit results to anything from the last 6 months to the last 10 years, and sort by Best Match or Most Recent.
- Explore a result. Click the title to open the study, or open the Abstract to read a summary without leaving the page.
- Cite it. Use Copy Plain Text or Copy BibTeX to grab a ready-made citation.
- Need more? Use the Google Scholar button to run the same search there in a new tab.
What the Labels Mean
- S2S Resource A resource from Science to the Station. These appear at the top of every search.
- Read the S2S SCAN We've translated this study into a two-page, plain-language SCAN. Click to read or share it.
- S2S Breaking Science We've featured this study in Breaking Science. Click to read our one-pager for the station.
- Free full text A free, legal copy of the full study is available. Click it to read the whole thing.
Search Tips
| To do this | Type this | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Require two topics | sleep AND shift work | Only shows studies that cover both |
| Include either topic | PTSD OR burnout | Widens your search |
| Match an exact phrase | "cardiac arrest" | Keeps the words together in that order |
| Keep it short | heat stress | One to three key terms work better than full questions |
Don't see an S2S resource on your topic? When a search doesn't match anything on our site, the search term is sent to our team (no personal information is included). It helps us decide what to create next.
A quick reminder: Re-Search filters by keywords, so an off-topic study can occasionally slip through. Always check the study itself before you cite it.