This was going on for a while. from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/16/AR2007121601560.html
I still don’t like it. It’s eerie.
That is why President Bush called for the establishment of a volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps in his 2007 State of the Union address. "Such a corps would function much like our military reserve," he said. "It would ease the burden of the armed forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them." Both the State Department and the Pentagon support this initiative.
Not the same thing. Maybe slightly similar in concept. But this "Reserve Corps" of the Public Health Service sounds more like it's modeled on the Reserve components of the Armed Forces, including Coast Guard.