People

Amber Sabbatini, MD, MPH

Assistant Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine

University of Washington

I am a practicing emergency physician and federally-funded health services researcher with expertise in using claims and administrative datasets to understand how the delivery of emergency care affects patient outcomes, resource utilization, and quality. To date, much of my research has revolved around examining hospital admission practices and their consequences, including a special emphasis on observation care. Most recently, I have been awarded several federal and foundation grants to study the impact of payer policies and delivery reforms on health utilization and costs and their intersection with emergency care. These include a pilot award from the UW Population Health Initiative to examine the association between behavioral health integration under Washington state’s Medicaid Transformation Program and preventable ED use, an R34 from NIMH to study the impacts of state Medicaid policies targeting high-utilizers of the ED on mental health outcomes and a newly awarded R01 from the NIA to study how Medicare policies including the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program have affected the growth of observation stays and impacted outcomes for older adults requiring hospitalization. I am currently appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine and Adjunct Assistant Professor of Health Services at the University of Washington. I am additionally an affiliate faculty member for the Center for Health Innovation & Policy Science (CHIPS) and a core faculty in the Department of Emergency Medicine’s Section of Population Health. After completing my emergency medicine training in 2012, I undertook a health services research fellowship at the University of Michigan. I then joined the faculty at University of Washington and was subsequently awarded a K12 career development award in patient-centered outcomes research from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. I have been actively involved in the implementation of Washington state’s Medicaid Transformation Project in King County and serve on multiple workgroups related to improving care coordination and ED utilization among high-needs Medicaid patients. These activities complement my current grant-funded research in the Medicaid space and provide a stakeholder network for translating research into policy. I maintain active membership in the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) and American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP). I served on the SAEM grants committee for several years, and currently serve on the ACEP Patient Safety & Quality and Research committees. Finally, this past summer I served as a reviewer on an NHLBI R21 Special Emphasis Panel focusing on secondary analyses of existing datasets.

Cynthia Santos, MD

Assistant Professor

Rutgers New Jersey Medical School

Jennifer Love, MD, MSCR

Assistant Professor, Emergency Medicine

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Jennifer Love, MD, MSCR, is an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. After residency at the University of Pennsylvania, she completed a medical toxicology fellowship at Oregon Health & Science University. She then completed a clinical research fellowship at the Icahn School of Medicine under Dr. Lynne Richardson's T32 training program in emergency care research. Her current work focuses on opioid use disorder and novel substances of misuse, specifically xylazine. She also serves as the SAEM AWAEM research committee co-chair and the VP of Education.

Betty Chang, MD

New York–Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Michelle Lee, MDCM

The Hospital for Sick Children

Frederick Kofi Korley, MD, PhD

Associate Professor with tenure

University of Michigan

Frederick Korley, M.D., Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Michigan. He received his medical and emergency medicine education at Northwestern University School of Medicine, serving as chief resident during his final year of training. He also received doctoral training in clinical investigation at the Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health with election into Phi Beta Kappa. His doctoral thesis represents the first published study of the diagnostic accuracy of a high sensitivity troponin assay in a US emergency department population. He was the inaugural recipient of the Robert E. Meyerhoff Assistant Professorship at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Dr. Korley’s research work is focused on the development of diagnostics and therapeutics for TBI. With regards to the development of diagnostics for TBI, Dr. Korley holds a patent for a panel of biofluid-based biomarkers for brain injury detection and outcome prognostication. He is a co-investigator of the largest observational study of TBI in the US (the Transforming Research and Clinical Knowledge in TBI, TRACK-TBI). As part of this work, he leads efforts in the clinical validation of novel brain injury biomarkers. In collaboration with colleagues in engineering, Dr. Korley is also developing a credit card sized microfluidic device for point-of-care measurement of TBI bioflud biomarkers. Dr. Korley is also a co-investigator in the clinical coordinating center of the NIH funded Strategies to Innovate Emergency Clinical Care Trials (SIREN) network. He is a principal investigator of two federally funded research studies run by the SIREN network, that are investigating the use of biofluid-based biomarkers for 1) subject selection in clinical trials; 2) monitoring individual patient response to promising neuroprotective agents. He also participates in the DoD/FDA funded TBI Endpoints Development (TED) Initiative, a public-private partnership examining effective measures or “endpoints” of brain injury and recovery. With regards to the development of therapeutics for TBI, Dr. Korley is a principal investigator of a SIREN network NINDS funded phase II adaptive design clinical trial that is investigating the optimal treatment parameters of hyperbaric oxygen that is most likely to demonstrate improvement in the rate of good neurological outcome versus control in a subsequent confirmatory trial. During the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. Korley is leveraging his expertise in the testing of novel therapeutics to lead an NHLBI funded multi-center clinical trial of COVID-19 convalescent plasma in outpatients (C3PO) as one of the national co-PIs. With enrollment of participants at >50 emergency departments across the country, this study represents a significant contribution by the emergency medicine community to test a promising therapeutic in COVID-19 patients who are discharged home from the emergency department. Dr. Korley has >70 peer-reviewed publications in high impact journals such as JAMA, Lancet, JAMA Neurology, JAMA Psychiatry, JAMA Cardiology, and the Journal of the American College of Cardiology. He is a member of the NINDS Neurological Sciences and Disorders A (NSD-A) study section.

Phillip A. Scott, MD, MBA

Professor

Department of Emergency Medicine, Michigan Medicine

As the originator of the acute stroke team at the University of Michigan, I have been extensively involved with clinical stroke research for 25 years. Over that period, our team has developed a comprehensive, multispecialty approach to the treatment of patients with cerebrovascular disease. This effort extensively involves emergency medicine, neurology, neurosurgery, radiology, interventional neuroradiology, neuro-intensivists, rehabilitation and partners from multiple other disciplines within the health system. Our system has demonstrated ability not only within the walls of the hospital, but also the ability to design, implement and conduct research in the community and regional settings to enhance stroke care access and knowledge among patients and external providers – from their homes, to the streets (EMS), to the hospitals. My background in recruiting, developing, and implementing multidisciplinary systems and teams for the delivery of acute stroke care and NIH-supported research across multiple clinical trials over the past two decades provides key insights into the proposed research platform. I have personally participated in over 35 clinical trials, serving as site principal investigator in over ten and as the overall principal investigator in seven. I was the Principal Investigator on the INSTINCT Trial (RO1 NS050372) examining methods to enhance stroke systems of care. That experience, along with my background in clinical trial development, engineering, and newer business and marketing expertise, provide a tremendous foundation for the STEP program. My research involvement has focused on clinical trial work in: 1) development of population- and systems-based approaches to acute stroke care and research, particularly focusing on community delivery of acute stroke care (second-stage knowledge translation) 2) hyper-acute, thrombolytic, based stroke treatment strategies, 3) efforts to extend stroke treatment via neuronal protection mechanisms (both pharmacologic and hypothermic), 4) the development of mechanical-based clot removal and lysis in stroke, 5) methods to enhance treatment for subarachnoid hemorrhage care via hypothermia, 6) primary stroke prevention via enhanced identification of atrial fibrillation. My work has been extensively funded by the NIH and I have led and/or participated in numerous consortia, multicenter clinical trials, and trial networks, including: INSTINCT (PI: RO1 NS050372), SPOTRIAS (P50 NS044283, NETT (U01 NS056975) and STROKENET (co-PIs with Dr. Brown: U10 NS086526). In August, 2013 my mother suffered a large and debilitating stroke which was not treated effectively due to the time limitations of therapy at that time. During my subsequent partial sabbatical, I obtained an advanced business degree from the University of Michigan with the intent of applying the science of enhancing system efficiency and marketing promotion to clinical trial findings in order to accelerate uptake of research results by healthcare provider and patient populations. I believe the STEP program will greatly enhance our ability as scientists and clinicians to rapidly improve systems to reduce the burden of stroke on our communities and may be leveraged to reduce and eliminate barriers to broad community implementation of new results.

Eve Losman, MD

Clinical Assistant Professor

Department of Emergency Medicine, Michigan Medicine

In 2016, Dr. Losman joined the Washtenaw Health Initiative –Opioid Project and in 2017 she became her department’s representative on the Michigan Medicine Pain Committee and QI Controlled Substances Committee.In 2018, Dr. Losman joined the CDC funded Injury Prevention Center. She is involved in 3 projects focused on the Opioid Epidemic; creation of a web-based toolkit for providers and the public regarding appropriate prescribing and the care of patients with Opiate Use Disorder; real time tracking of opiate overdoses to assist public health, EMS, and law enforcement to respond more effectively and rapidly to community needs; creation of a toolkit for post overdose care from the Emergency Department. She is part of the ReWrite the Script team at Michigan Medicine as well as the MEDIC QI project working within her department as well as institution wide on clinician education regarding appropriate use of opiates, curbing the inappropriate prescribing of opiates, and alternative strategies to control acute pain. She is leadingthe harm reduction effort to educate opiate overdose patients in the ED regarding the use of Naloxone rescue.As evidenced by the many activities detailed above and below, Dr. Losman has a longstanding commitment to the education of EM residentsand the emergency care of older adults. More recently she has applied her leadership and organizational skills to the area of public health with a focus inappropriate ED utilization and the Opioid Epidemic. She has found ways to combine these interests in a meaningful and productive manner.

Lauren M. Westafer, DO, MPH, MS

Assistant Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine

University of Massachusetts Medical School - Baystate

Dr. Westafer, DO, MPH, MS (she/her) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical School - Baystate and Director of the Emergency Medicine Research Fellowship. Lauren is an implementation science researcher and FOAMed enthusiast. She is author of the blog, The Short Coat, and cofounder of the emergency medicine podcast, FOAMcast. Dr. Westafer lectures internationally on social media in medical education, critical appraisal and journal club design, pulmonary embolism, and advancing the quality of healthcare for LGBTQI+ patients. In addition, she serves as the Social Media Editor and a research methodology editor for Annals of Emergency Medicine and an Associate Editor for the NEJM Journal Watch Emergency Medicine.

Iris Reyes, MD

Professor

Department of Emergency Medicine, Perelman School of Medicine University of Pennsylvania

Iris Reyes, MD, FACEP is a Professor of Clinical Emergency at the Perelman School of Medicine (PSOM) at the University of Pennsylvania. She has served as an Attending Physician in the Emergency Department at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania since completing her fellowship in 1989. Dr. Reyes has served as an Advisory Dean for the PSOM Office of Student Affairs, an Ombudsman, a member of the Admissions Committee at Penn Med, and as a faculty preceptor for the Medical Spanish Elective and the Latino Medical Student Association. Dr. Reyes developed and has precepted the Minority Mentoring Seminar Series (aka “Cracking the Clerkships”) designed to provide mentoring resources for medical students from backgrounds under-represented in Medicine for over 20 years. Her longstanding interest in the impact of cultural diversity on healthcare delivery led to her co- development of a mandatory course for first year medical students at Penn Med. The course was absorbed into the broader “Doctoring Course” and continues to address issues such as racism in Medicine, spirituality in healthcare, and the proper use of interpreters for patients with limited English proficiency. Dr. Reyes’s passion for improving diversity in Medicine and the need to improve the pipeline and support of under-represented minority residents and faculty led to her founding of the UPHS-CHOP Alliance of Minority Physicians (AMP) in 2012. AMP promotes the recruitment, retention, mentoring and the overall success of minority residents and fellows training in the University of Pennsylvania Health System and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. AMP’s efforts have led to a near doubling of the minority residents, fellows and faculty at Penn Medicine and CHOP. It has also promoted an expansion of Visiting clerkship programs for minority medical students from 1 to 15 participating residency programs. This year, AMP faculty members led the charge to demand the elimination of institutional racism at our health systems.

Bennett Lane, MD, MS

University of Cincinnati

Christine Luo, MD, PhD

Oregon Health and Science University

Masashi Okubo, MD, MS

University of Pittsburgh

Masashi Okubo, MD, MS

University of Pittsburgh

The overarching goal of this SAEMF Research Large Project Grant is to identify and measure prehospital resuscitation culture that contributes to variations in survival and functional outcome after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) across emergency medical services (EMS) agencies in the United States. OHCA is a major public health problem worldwide, annually affecting over 356,000 Americans with substantial regional variation in survival and functional recovery.

Karin Rhodes, MD, MS

Chief Implementation Officer

Agency for Healthcare Research& Quality (AHRQ)

Karin Rhodes, MD MS is Chief Implementation Officer at the Agency for Healthcare Research& Quality (AHRQ), leading a strategic plan for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Trust Fund investments and contributing to AHRQ’s practice improvement efforts. Karin completed an emergency medicine residency and the RWJF Clinical Scholar’s Program at the University of Chicago. At Penn, she was inaugural Chair of the Center for Emergency Care and Policy Research, where she led research teams testing ED innovations in screening/intervening for health-related social risks, improving transitions in care, and led a national team tracking the impact of ACA insurance expansions on access to primary care in 10 diverse states. As VP for Care Management at the Northwell Health, she designed and evaluated innovations to address the complex care needs and social determinants of patients across the continuum of care. After a year in DC as a RWJF Health Policy Fellow in both the Senate and House, she served as director of public health for the state of New Mexico, giving her experience with both federal and state legislation and policy making. During the COVID-19 pandemic in NYC, Karin worked with Health & Hospital’s ED COVID-19 Action Team on public health messaging and convened regional EM leadership to develop a set of ethical principles for equitable allocation of resuscitation resources. With support from RWJF, she engaged a human-centered design firm, organized and co-chaired Emergency Medicine All Threats (EMAT), an informal network of NYC-area emergency medicine leaders seeking to break down silos across competing health systems, share regional knowledge and actionable data, and improve health equity and public health preparedness. As AHRQ’s first ever Chief Implementation Officer, she hopes to build on these experiences and support federal cross-agency teams to generate, synthesize, disseminate, and integrate evidence into clinical care and give patients a voice in the complex process of health system change.

Joneigh S. Khaldun, MD, MPH

Chief Medical Executive and Chief Deputy Director for Health

Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS)

Joneigh S. Khaldun, MD, MPH is the Chief Medical Executive and Chief Deputy Director for Health in the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS). In those roles, she provides overall medical guidance for the State of Michigan and oversees public health, Medicaid, behavioral health, and aging services for MDHHS. She leads the state’s public health response to COVID-19. Prior to her role at MDHHS, she was the Director of the Detroit Health Department, where she led a robust community health assessment, established a comprehensive reproductive health network, and led Detroit’s response to the largest Hepatitis A outbreak in modern U.S. history. Previously, Dr. Khaldun was the Baltimore City Health Department’s Chief Medical Officer and the Founder and Director of the Fellowship in Health Policy in the University of Maryland Department of Emergency Medicine. She is currently a member of the National Advisory Board for the Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation at the University of Michigan, the Health and Medicine Committee of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, and the Board of Directors of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metropolitan Detroit. Dr. Khaldun is the recipient of several awards, including the National Minority Quality Forum 40 Under 40 Leaders in Minority Health Award, the deBeaumont Foundation 40 Under 40 Leaders in Public Health Award, the Kresge Emerging Leaders in Public Health Fellowship, the George Washington University Milkin Institute School of Public Health Dean’s 950 Award, 2020 Crain’s Detroit Notable Women in Health, and Crain’s Detroit 2020 Newsmaker of the Year. Dr. Khaldun obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan, medical degree from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, MPH in Health Policy from George Washington University, and completed residency in emergency medicine at SUNY Downstate/Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn, NY, where she was elected chief resident in her final year. She is a board-certified emergency medicine physician and practices part-time at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit.

Renee Hsia, MD, MSc

Professor of Emergency Medicine and Health Policy

University of California San Francisco

Renee Y. Hsia, MD, MSc, is Professor of Emergency Medicine and Health Policy at the University of California San Francisco. She is Associate Chair of Health Services Research in the Department of Emergency Medicine, and also a member of the Philip R. Lee Institute of Health Policy Studies, UCSF Global Health Economics Consortium, and UCSF Center for Healthcare Value. Dr. Hsia is a national leader in research focusing on access to emergency care, especially for vulnerable populations; emergency department and trauma center utilization; the effect of service availability on patient outcomes; regionalization of care; and the wide variation in the costs and charges in healthcare. She has had over 150 publications in peer-reviewed journals, and her pioneering work has been highlighted in print media such as the New York Times, national radio such as NPR, and network television. Her research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health; National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute; the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; and the American Heart Association. Dr. Hsia has received numerous awards, including the Academy for Women in Academic Emergency Medicine Early Career Faculty Award, Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Young Investigator Award, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Physician Faculty Scholars Award, and a Fulbright-Schuman Award from the U.S. Department of State and European Union. She has been invited on visiting professorships to multiple universities. She has mentored more than 40 trainees ranging from pre-medical students to junior faculty on projects, the majority of which have resulted in publications as well as oral and poster presentations at national meetings. Dr. Hsia works clinically at the San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center, and speaks Mandarin, Cantonese, Spanish, and French. She received her undergraduate degree from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University; her medical degree from Harvard Medical School; her master’s training in health policy, planning, and financing at the London School of Economics and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine; and her residency training in emergency medicine at Stanford University.

Taneisha Wilson, MD, SCM

Brown University / Rhode Island Hospital

Michael Lyons, MD, MPH

Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine

University of Cincinnati

Michael S. Lyons, MD, MPH has been a transformative and nationally recognized leader at the intersection of emergency medicine and public health for nearly 20 years, most predominantly in the areas of transmissible infectious diseases and substance use disorders. After completing his undergraduate degree at Northwestern University, he attended Duke Medical School with election to AOA and then served as Resident and Chief Resident at the University of Cincinnati (UC), where he is now Associate Professor. As faculty, Dr. Lyons completed a Master of Public Health degree at Emory University and has headed the Division of Public Health and Health Services Research since 2002. Dr. Lyons has worked tirelessly to reduce fragmentation that divides emergency medicine from public health and other healthcare entities. In particular, he leads the UC Early Intervention Program (EIP), an ever-expanding array of clinical prevention services continuously funded for two decades by a variety of public health, community, healthcare, and industry sponsors. The EIP was the first and most notable example of health departments directly funding prevention programs in EDs and innovates operational changes to advance public health practice in healthcare settings that do not require external funding. EIP is also active in the community, most recently operating a massive $multi-million countywide COVID screening effort. Over 100 nurses, physicians, researchers, and other allied health professionals began their careers as EIP service providers, and Dr. Lyons has directly mentored countless others in projects and clinical practice. This body of clinical, educational, and administrative work directly informs Dr. Lyons’ research, which has been variously funded by NIH, CDC, AHRQ, EMF, and SAMHSA and required leadership of multi-disciplinary collaborations involving infectious diseases, gastroenterology, virology, addiction and mental health, communications, sociology, economics, healthcare informatics, and operations simulation. Dr. Lyons has authored multiple seminal papers involving ED screening and linkageto-care practices, led the planning and evaluation of the nation’s largest per capita regional naloxone distribution effort, and is currently honored to serve as co-lead of Ohio’s “Intervention Operations Core” in the unprecedented $350 million NIH/SAMHSA HEALing Communities Study, promoting multisector system and practice change to substantially reduce opioid overdose deaths. He has also played a leading role in development of the EM Transmissible Infectious Diseases and Epidemics (EMTIDE) SAEM interest group, served as an invited co-editor for special supplement issues to Annals of Emergency Medicine and Public Health Reports, and was an invited speaker for an American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) Congressional Briefing on the role medical colleges can play in community health. 

Michelle P. Lin, MD, MPH, MS

Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine

Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai

Michelle Lin, MD, MPH, MS, FACEP is an emergency physician and health services researcher whose goal is to improve the value, equity and patient-centeredness of emergency care. Dr. Lin is the recipient of a five-year grant from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI/ NIH) to validate a novel instrument to assess patient-reported outcomes after adult ED asthma visits and evaluate the association with subsequent acute care utilization, after adjusting for geospatially coded environmental & social risk factors. Her prior work has been funded by the Emergency Medicine Foundation and American Board of Medical Specialties and examines variation in ED outcomes and the influence of alternative payment models on acute care delivery and payment. Dr. Lin is engaged in research and implementation projects on career development to enhance diversity and equity; actively mentors several fellows, residents, and medical students. She holds leadership roles on multiple national committees, including the National Quality Forum, the American College of Emergency Physicians Quality Committee, and Academy of Women in Academic Emergency Medicine. Dr. Lin completed a fellowship in Health Policy Research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a Masters in Clinical Epidemiology at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She is a graduate of Northwestern University and completed residency at Bellevue Hospital and NYU Medical Center.