Foundation History

The Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) was established in 1989 by the amalgamation of the Society of Teachers of Emergency Medicine and the University Association for Emergency Medicine. As a part of its mission, SAEM provided limited grant funding through the Emergency Medicine Foundation. These grants included the EMF/SAEM Innovations in Medical Education Grants, the EMF/SAEM Medical Student Research Grants, and the EMS Research Fellowship. In the mid-1990's SAEM began funding geriatric emergency medicine grants as well.

In 1998, the SAEM Board of Directors agreed that the Society should do more to fund research, and established a SAEM-specific Research Fund with an initial organizational commitment of $1,000,000. At that time, the Resident Training Grant, the Scholarly Sabbatical Grant, and the Medical Student Interest Group Grants were developed. The original goal of the Research Fund was to support ten scholarly awards by the year 2004, and a SAEM Research Fund balance target of five million dollars was established.

Later, it became apparent that one year of training would not be sufficient for academic emergency physicians, especially when compared to the research training that is provided to investigators in other specialties. In 2001, SAEM expanded the grants program by increasing the amount of dollars it gave to fund its grants, and in 2002, the Board of Directors set a target of increasing the annual grant funding to nearly $1,000,000 per year. The Board realized that several more million dollars in the Research Fund balance would be required to meet these goals, and thus decided to create a Foundation that could dedicate its whole purpose to this end.

The SAEM Research Foundation was established as a separate 501(c)(3) organization in 2008 and the original Research Fund corpus was placed in its care. Since then, the Foundation has also created an Education Fund to support emergency medicine academicians who choose to pursue a career in education. As part of this expansion, the SAEM Research Foundation was renamed the SAEM Foundation, with the ability to fund both research and educational initiatives. Donors may now designate their funds toward either research or educational grants.