Columbia Weill Cornell Emergency Medicine Centers of Excellence

Emergency Medicine Resident Association - Augustine D'Orta Award 2007: Satchit Balsari, MD, MPH PGY 4 - This award is given to a resident who demonstrates outstanding community minded, grass roots oriented political involvement in health policy or community issues. Satchit is one of our Chief Residents. His research interests have encompassed a wide range of activities including child labor in India, children in humanitarian crises, and state impunity in mass violence. Satchit is the convener of Project MumbaiVOICES, a multi-institutional, citizen-powered analysis of the July 2006 serial train blasts in Mumbai. He is currently focused on the development of Emergency Medicine and pre-hospital care in low-income settings. This is the second year in a row that one of our residents has won this award. Alwyn Andrews-Mziray, PGY3, was honored last year.
Emergency Medicine Resident Association - Joseph F. Waeckerle Founder's Award: Kristen Harkin, MD, Attending Cornell Campus. This award honors a physician who has made an extraordinary, lasting contribution to the success of EMRA. Kristen is past President of EMRA and has remained very active in the organization since her tenure. She is currently a board member of New York ACEP
NYP Columbia University Medical Center Physician of the Year: Wallace Carter, MD, Residency Director - For the fourth year in a row an Emergency Medicine faculty attending has been honored with this award. Dr. Carter will receive this year's award from the Nursing staff at Columbia University Medical Center for his unflagging commitment to the Emergency Department and all of its citizens.
New York Weill Cornell Medical Center Alumni Council Distinguished Housestaff Award 2007: Dean Straff, MD, PGY 4 - This award recognizes a member of the housestaff from each department for "all around excellence". Dean is one of our Chief Residents and has matured into a wonderful educator. This past summer he was the camp doctor for Camp Amerikids, a summer camp for children affected by HIV/AIDS. He has been involved in multiple projects in East Africa and India, and will once again travel to India this fall.
Wilderness Medicine Medical Student elective: After successfully integrating Wilderness and Environmental Medicine into our residency program, we will be having our second medical student elective in Wilderness Medicine taught right here in NYC!! The month long elective will include both clinical experience and lectures in NYC and in the Adirondacks by our own faculty and senior residents.
The Inaugural Northeast Wilderness CME Conference was held in Ithaca, NY in September 2007. The conference brought many experts in Wilderness Medicine to the Northeast. Cornell Outdoor Education provided hands-on learning experiences in recreational and backcountry medicine. The conference was only one of the many activities of the fast growing Wilderness Medicine Program (NYP / WMC campus) directed by Dr. Jay Lemery, Attending, Cornell Campus. For more information: http://www.nypemergency.org/wilderness/
International Emergency Medicine - Dominican Republic: Excursions to the Dominican Republic have become an annual tradition in our program. In September, 2007, Drs. Robert Bristow, Columbia EM faculty member, and Alan Ross, Columbia Pediatric EM faculty member, inaugurated the First Annual Emergency Medicine/Trauma Course in Santiago, Dominican Republic. NYP faculty and residents taught a four day course which included didactics and skills stations to surgeons, residents and students in the Dominican Republics' second largest city. It is part of a multi-pronged and continuing effort to help reduce morbidity and mortality related to trauma in the developing world. Since its inception, this project has seen a significant role played by medical students and resident physicians.
International Emergency Medicine - India: This fall, Dr. Wallace Carter will lead a large team of over 15 Attendings and residents in running NYP's first educational conference in the city of Mumbai. The 2 day conference on the basics of Emergency Medicine will consist of lectures, panel discussions and skill stations. The goal is to introduce Emergency Medicine to the physician population of Mumbai and hopefully impart some valuable strategies for early emergency care. Drs. Satchit Balsari, David Anthony and Dean Straff will present their work on Project EMcounter (www.EMcounter.com) at the EMCON conference in Chennai. Dr. Robert Bristow will return to Gujarat to continue with the annual train-the-trainer course in emergency medicine, with a collaborative team of attending physicians from NYP and other institutions. This year, the team will incorporate a live disaster drill into the course which will highlight the critical importance of teamwork between the first responders and the emergency department.
Overseas EMS training: NewYork-Presbyterian EMS will formalize its educational collaboration with Lifesupporters Institute of Health Sciences (LIHS) in India. They will help train the first generation of paramedics in the city of Mumbai and the state of Kerala. Drs. Wallace Carter and Heidi Cordi have completed their initial inspection trips to India.
Neal Flomenbaum, MD, Physician-in-Chief, Cornell campus, and James Giglio, MD Physician-in-chief, Columbia campus, will co-chair the 2008 NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital Gala. This year's annual Gala will benefit the Department of Emergency Medicine.
Wallace Carter, MD, Residency Director, was recently named to the Residency Review Committee for Emergency Medicine. This position enables Dr. Carter to continue charting the course for emergency medicine resident training nationally.
Peter Wyer, MD, Attending Columbia campus, who has been on the Annals of Emergency Medicine editorial board as editor of the Department of Evidence-Based Emergency Medicine since 1997, has been promoted to Associate Editor of the journal. He is currently working under a 2 year grant from the National Board of Medical Examiner's Stemmler Fund for Medical Education Research on a project to design and validate cognitive measures of practice-based learning and improvement (PBLI) for residency education and competency evaluation.
Kiran Pandit, MD, MPH, Attending Columbia Campus, was elected to the Board of Directors of the American Academy of Emergency Medicine in India(AAEMI). Dr. Pandit is headed to Gujarat in November to assist with the train- the-trainers program in Ahmedabad.
Jay Lemery, MD, Attending Cornell Campus, was recently elected to the Wilderness Medicine Society Board of Directors. Dr. Lemery has successfully spearheaded the integration of Wilderness and Environmental Medicine into our residency program.
Lorna Breen MD, Attending Columbia Campus, was elected to the Board of Directors of the New York Chapter of American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP).
Jeremy R. Simon, MD, PhD, Attending Columbia Campus, joined the Center for Bioethics, while continuing his role in the Department for Emergency Medicine. Dr. Simon serves on the Institutional Review Board for the Columbia University Medical Center.
Satchit Balsari, MD, MPH, PGY4, was reappointed as Fellow of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, and Visiting Scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health, for the academic year 2007-08, where he will continue his research on urban disaster management. This year, he also joins Ambulance Access for All Foundation, USA, as one of its Founding Directors, and joins the Managing Committee of the Disaster Management Center at Mumbai University
Ken Yu, MD, MBA, PGY4, one of our chief residents, has been appointed to SAEM Finance Committee 2007-2008. He is serving on Budget, Financial Statements and Investments Subcommittees.
Jennifer Thompson, MD, PGY4 was reappointed for the second year as the EMRA representative to the ACEP Public Health Committee.
Alisa Koval, MD, PGY2 has been appointed to ACEP's Quality and Performance Committee.