Cole Ettingoff, MPH

Mr. Ettingoff is a medical student at Trinity School of Medicine, though completed the first two years of medical school at Tel Aviv University. He has been active nationally in emergency medicine since the start of his medical education, holding multiple leadership roles at the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM), American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), and the National Association of EMS Physicians. His service in these roles is unprecedented as none of the roles were intended to be student roles.

Mr. Ettingoff has been active nationally in public health since before medical school and views his work in emergency medicine (EM) as a continuation of that interest and has fueled his passion for social EM, in particular. He has served in health departments on both the east and west coasts supporting a wide range of projects related to health equity, access to care, health communications, and building health systems more responsive to the needs of the public. He continues to consult on a number of projects around the country. He has and continues to serve in numerous leadership roles in the American Public Health Association and is currently standing for election to be chair of the APHA Injury Control and Emergency Health Services Section.

Mr. Ettingoff views emergency medicine as the ultimate safety net and perhaps the key intersection of medicine and public health. He has written about, spoken about, and worked on a number of topics related to social EM and EMS, particularly EMS-based mobile integrated health and community paramedicine programs. He has also served as an abstract and manuscript reviewer for these topics for several journals and conferences. With a particularly close relationship with Medical Care journal, he successfully launched a junior peer reviewer program introducing more than two hundred medical and graduate students to academic peer review and is working with the journal to develop a special issue for next year.

Even as a student, Mr. Ettingoff has initiated and led several national projects including the 2021 APHA Symposium on Health and Medical Misinformation which featured more than 700 participants and was instrumental in the emergence of several projects related to health misinformation. He has proposed and has championed the development of the first ever standards of care for health-related social needs in the emergency department and has championed the inclusion of social EM and EMS-based mobile integrated health in both emergency medicine and public health research and policy. He has also written several articles for SAEM Pulse, a chapter of EMRA’s Advocacy Handbook, and is in the process of writing a book for APHA Press.

Within SAEM Mr. Ettingoff has also led several research committee subcommittees on topics ranging from diversity and inclusion in research to reinvigorating how we showcase exceptional research, often bridging the gap between the research committee and the virtual presence committee where he leads the podcast working group. He has previously served on the SAEM program and ethics committees and has organized several sessions of the SAEM Research Learning Series, BioSketch podcast, and Who’s Who in Academic EM Podcast.

Despite his many involvements, Mr. Ettingoff has been very successful in the classroom, as well. Beginning with a bachelors in geography and emergency health systems, cum laude from George Washington, he continued on to complete his MPH while working in public health, a post-baccalaureate program at UC Berkeley, and complete his first two years of medical school at Tel Aviv University. While at TAU, Mr. Ettingoff served as class secretary for the first two years of medical school, during some extremely challenging adaptations to both COVID and conflict in the Middle East, completed a Certificate in Healthcare Quality and Safety from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, and a Certificate in Business of Healthcare from the Wharton School/Penn Medicine, while also maintaining a 3.91 GPA and receiving several honors marks.

Mr. Ettingoff brings to his academic work a wealth of operational experience both tactically and strategically as an EMT, firefighter, rescue diver, aerial photographer, pilot, and incident management team planner and commander. He has led teams ranging from two to 2,000 on incidents ranging from simple medical emergencies to multistate hurricane responses and fires to national security special events. Mr. Ettingoff looks forward to completing his medical degree in the United States and hopes to continue into an emergency medicine residency and a career where he can serve clinically, operationally in public health and EMS, and continue to conduct research which furthers the interface of emergency medicine and public health. In the shorter term, he looks forward to continuing to champion minimum standards of care for social EM, to leading the development of “gold standards” for social EM, advocating for the expansion of EMS mobile integrated health programs, public health projects related to the implications of social media, and continuing his involvement with SAEM’s passionate committees and interest groups.