People

Eliot Blum, MD

Member-at-Large

Emory University

It is with great honor and respect that I apply for this position. I have been a member of ADIEM for years and have served as the co-chair of the LGBTQ+ committee over the past three years. As my tenure in this roll comes to an end, it is almost impossible to visualize my future without playing an active roll in this integral part of SAEM. ADIEM aligns with everything that I believe in to my core, and I have been able to help create meaningful change being a part of the executive committee. I want that to continue, as I am just getting started. The LGTBTQ+ mentorship program is starting to gain traction and I believe its ability to change lives is going to be great. This is just one simple conversation, an idea, that came from the executive committee and SAEM board and has blossomed into a vehicle to make this world a better place. I need to continue to surround myself with the leaders in this field so I can continue to follow their example. Dr. Gipson is the president-elect for ADIEM, and I cannot wait for the future of this organization, especially, by looking and the successes over the past few years.

Ryan Ellis Tsuchida, MD

Secretary-Treasurer

University of Wisconsin

My name is Dr. Ryan Tsuchida (he/him), I am excited to run for the position of Secretary-Treasurer for ADIEM, and I would be honored to receive your support. I am an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I am committed to advancing academic emergency medicine and ensuring its future is more diverse, equitable, and inclusive. These core values are reflected in the work of ADIEM and, as Secretary-Treasurer, I will work collaboratively with members of the executive committee to advance our organization’s mission. This work is not new to me as I bring substantial experience having previously served as the inaugural Chair of SAEM’s Equity and Inclusion – Data and Metrics Subcommittee (2020 – 22). I am currently serving a two-year term as ADIEM’s membership committee chair (2022 – present). These experiences have allowed me to inform the Board on developing best practices for measuring and tracking the operational initiatives that promote a diverse workforce and ensure relevant content is included in SAEM Pulse submissions and during the Annual Conference.

Important to committee work, is the opportunities and service we provide to our general membership. Working collaboratively with SAEM leaders, I have routinely collaborated on workshops (such as “Beyond Diversity Recruitment: Next Steps to Ensure That Diverse Emergency Medicine Residents Thrive”), presented didactics (such as “Beyond Implicit Bias Training: How to Drive Sustainable Change”), presented abstracts (such as “Identifying the Prevalence of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Leaders in Emergency Medicine”), and contributed to other collaborative SAEM DEI initiatives (such as “The Diversity Snowball Effect – Understanding What, Why, and How”). Additionally, I am dedicated to providing mentorship and promoting pathways to ensure that ADIEM continues to strengthen its impact.

I understand the relevant problems, practical solutions, and common barriers to DEI work. I Chair my department’s equity, diversity, and inclusion committee and serve as the interim Assistant Dean of Multicultural Affairs for Health Professions Learners at the University of Wisconsin, School of Medicine and Public Health. I will use these experiences, in collaboration with my network of DEI leaders in academic medicine, to advocate for impactful and authentic change.

ADIEM is a growing community and one of SAEM’s largest academies. We must use this broad interest and diverse talent pool to increase our influence as an organization and leverage cross-sectional interests with other academies including those of research, clinical operations, and education. I am grounded by the tenets of cultural humility which promote life-long learning, mitigating power imbalances, and promoting institutional accountability. With your support, as your Secretary-Treasurer, I will leverage my skills in organizational management and team building to support the mission of ADIEM.

Venkatesh R. Bellamkonda, MD

Secretary-Treasurer

Mayo Clinic

I am an emergency physician with passions for ultrasound, quality, and education - currently serving as chair of education for Mayo Clinic emergency medicine. Although my career never started with this in mind, over the years, I have developed a passion for healthcare justice after witnessing biases and injustices for our patients and our staff alike. As a result, in the past several years, I have been mentor author for projects investigating biases in our care of women, patients of differing body size, language and more. In addition, I have been part of providing education that pays special attention to accessibility by people of differing abilities and needs. I have advocated for more inclusive interview and selection processes at different levels, as well as work on community outreach to mentor and uplift people with fewer advantages in the process.

I believe the next step for me to be helpful is to stand alongside others outside of my institution and direct community who share this view. Together I believe I can help make changes that benefit a larger portion of the nation and the specialty.

Sreeja M. Natesan, MD

President-Elect

Duke University

Hello! I am an Associate Professor and Associate Program Director at Duke University. I am also co-chair of the Duke Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) committee. My primary area of interest and expertise is in diversity & inclusion, clinical teaching, and feedback by incorporating innovative novel strategies in the ED to create an inclusive environment. I am enthusiastic, with a passion for collaboration and helping to contribute through my project management, organizational, and communication skills. I have served on several national committees for education & diversity including the planning committee for the SAEM Educational Summit, cofounder and co-chair for the CORD DEI Mini-track for the past 3 years, cofounder and co-chair of the CORD DEI Virtual Holistic Recruitment conference for the past 2 years, Vice Chair of CORD DEI committee, Co-chair of the CORD Academy for Scholarship, among other leadership roles. I am also grateful to be the current secretary for ADIEM and am an active member in the SAEM Equity & Inclusion Committee.

I possess a broad clinical and research training experience centering on project management, collaboration, and educational skills training. Briefly, this includes ACEP Teaching Fellowship, ALiEM Faculty Incubator Program (where I now serve as Chief Academic Officer), AAMC Medical Education Research Certificate program & LEAD fellowship, and am a recent graduate of Duke Teaching for Equity Fellowship.

I am running for the role of President-Elect for ADIEM. I would be honored and privileged to work with others to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion for our ADIEM community through education and research. I believe together we have the power to have a greater impact and am excited to be involved further to give back to our community that has given me so much. My desire is to help create inclusive environments that fosters belonging for our learners (and each other) so we can better serve our patients. I seek to help disseminate knowledge by curating and providing resources to our community surrounding diversity in medical education, best practices/promising practices surrounding faculty/resident recruitment with the use of holistic review, and mitigating bias in the education and feedback we provide.

I would love to provide regular offerings to our community in the form of skills training and regular workshops to practice tools that can then be shared at the participant’s local institutions. I have been able to do work surrounding this here at Duke by teaching holistic recruitment to our program directors at our institutional GME meetings and through my role as Duke GME Professional Development co-chair. By having regular workshops and interactions, we can have a larger impact in transforming the culture and environments we work in. A favorite quote of mine is "diversity is inviting everyone to the table, equity is allowing everyone to talk, but inclusion is ensuring everyone is heard." This encompasses my own mission within MedEd–and in knowing DEI is relational work– I look forward to the opportunity to be involved, create networks and relationships, in order to serve our ADIEM community and beyond.

Joseph L. Williams, MPH

Medical Student Representative

Kansas City University

I am a current MS2 at Kansas City University and graduate of the Yale School of Public Health, where I honed my skills and knowledge in public health and Chronic Disease Epidemiology. Obtaining my MPH before medical school has added a valuable dimension to my medical education that has dovetailed elegantly with both my prior training in emergency medicine as an EMT and research addressing the opioid crisis.

I have been involved in SAEM since 2019 attending the NERDS conference in Worcester, MA and subsequently submitted an abstract which was accepted for the 2020 NERDS conference that was unfortunately canceled in leu of COVID-19. Getting involved early, even before attending medical school, empowered me to attend SAEM’23 as a medical student ambassador and join AGEM as a medical student representative on the awards committee. SAEM has been foundational in honing my passion for Emergency Medicine and providing a framework to establish myself within the profession in the future.

If elected, I hope to advocate for the continued engagement of emergency medicine with public health competencies, especially for medical students who are early in their training. As a student at an osteopathic medical school, I recognize the need for mentorship, especially at institutions that lack emergency medicine faculty, and hope to leverage mentorship opportunities to such students. Finally, I hope to increase medical student engagement within committees and interest groups from institutions across the country to foster greater curiosity, interest, and applicants for Emergency medicine in future MATCH years.

Sara Schulwolf

Medical Student Representative

University of Connecticut

Hi! My name is Sara Schulwolf; I am a fourth-year medical student at the University of Connecticut and am using this year to complete a Master's in Public Health. I am thrilled to be applying into emergency medicine next cycle and, especially amid the recent whiplash in perceptions, applications, and job availability within the field, I am passionate about advocating for our specialty. As RAMS medical student representative, I would channel this enthusiasm into educating current students about why EM is a fulfilling specialty, as well as into pushing for systemic change to further elevate our specialty to be the best it can be.

EM offers far and away the most variety of any field, both in terms of patient population served and in opportunities for career development and specialization. I personally feel strongly about the unique privilege and responsibility that EM physicians have in caring for some of society’s highest-need and most underserved populations, such as individuals with substance use disorders, incarcerated individuals, and unhoused individuals. I also firmly believe that EM physicians have an important role to play in health advocacy. Accordingly, during my time at UConn I have participated in the Urban Service Track, an interdisciplinary auxiliary curriculum designed to build skills for effectively and empathetically working with underserved groups. Additionally, during my first year at UConn, I co-founded a student group aimed at addressing vaccine hesitancy in our community and through this, was able to contribute projects ranging from door-to-door vaccination campaigns in Hartford to supporting legislation restricting religious exemptions for public school immunization requirements. These efforts earned me recognition as a recipient of the 2022 National Excellence in Public Health award. I would hope to utilize this knowledge and experience as a member of the RAMS board to both initiate and support advocacy efforts among our members.

My greatest research and academic interest within EM is point-of-care ultrasound. I have been involved in leadership for UConn’s ultrasound interest group since my second year of medical school and have taught POCUS for a variety of audiences ranging from preclinical students to non-medical participants. Further, I have presented ultrasound research at a variety of regional and national conferences, including SAEM. As RAMS medical student representative I would aim to promote ultrasound education both within and outside our specialty, but beyond that, I would hope to similarly highlight and elevate other subfields in EM that offer additional career and training opportunities. Spotlighting these areas and creating opportunities for mentorship could go a long way in drawing talent to the field.

If given the opportunity to serve on the RAMS board, I will utilize my background, skills, and experiences to help our organization to best serve its members and our specialty as a whole. Thank you for your consideration, and I hope to meet you soon!

Jude C. Luke

Medical Student Representative

University of Cincinnati

My name is Jude Luke, and I am currently an M3 at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. I am excited to be considered as a candidate for the position of Medical Student Representative on the RAMS Board.

My journey into the world of Emergency Medicine began during my junior year of college when I had the privilege of volunteering at the Bellevue Hospital Emergency Department in Manhattan. As a volunteer patient advocate, my position afforded me the opportunity to work closely with patients and learn their stories. I had never witnessed a medical specialty that worked daily with people from such diverse walks of life. I embraced the culture of Emergency Medicine and the commitment to truly treating anyone, anything, and anytime. This experience ignited a passion in me for a field that not only delivers critical medical care, but also interfaces intimately with the social and political context in which it operates. This spark has grown into a blazing passion, and every opportunity I have to shadow or rotate in the Emergency Department reaffirms my commitment to this field.

As I started medical school in Cincinnati, I have had the opportunity to work closely with and learn from the talented, involved leaders of our Emergency Department. I have taken the time to learn about the history of Emergency Medicine and understand its unique development from Cincinnati and beyond. It has been a privilege to have access to such a strong department and further cultivate my interest in the field here. The mentorship and guidance I have received have been invaluable as I have taken on more projects in the department, been entrusted with more responsibility, and developed connections with residents and faculty. As my identity and passion for Emergency Medicine have developed, it has become apparent to me that my future lies in academic emergency medicine.

I was first introduced to SAEM by one of my mentors who taught me about the world of organized Emergency Medicine and medical administration. I have been fortunate to serve on the SAEM ED Administration and Clinical Operations Committee over the past year, where I’ve learned from esteemed faculty and residents from leading EM programs across the country. This experience has taught me about the many challenges facing Emergency Medicine and the dedication required to overcome these challenges.

Over the past three years, I have immersed myself in my local EM community, learning about both the challenges that residents and students face, and the things in their career that bring them joy. I have listened to and heeded their thoughts about where they are now and the path that lies ahead. As I enter my fourth year of medical school, I believe I am well-prepared to hold a position on the RAMS board and serve as a liaison between medical students and SAEM.

If elected, my goal is to provide honest and effective representation for medical students, working with my fellow board members to develop programs and events that meet the needs of the resident and medical student community who we serve. I am eager to build upon the continued success of our RAMS Board and the broader SAEM community, as well as pioneer new ideas and perspectives to broaden our reach. I am committed to serving as a voice for the medical student community and look forward to the opportunity to create a meaningful impact in this role.

Joshua Julian

Medical Student Representative

Saint Louis University SOM

From scribing in the ED during undergrad to transporting patients as an EMT, I have had the opportunity to explore Emergency Medicine in several capacities throughout my education, and each has bolstered my passion for the field. Since starting medical school, I have continued to seek out opportunities to learn more and share my enthusiasm for EM with others. Working as a co-lead for my school's EM interest group, I hosted suture nights, case presentations, and match panels from our EM faculty and future residents for my classmates. I also serve on the MOCEP student council working to put on EM education events for medical students throughout Missouri. I am now pursuing a position with RAMS to reach students on a national level. RAMS already has numerous amazing opportunities for medical students to take advantage of with the various committees, interest groups, and the annual conference. My goal is to spread the word about these experiences so medical students have ample exposure to all the things that make Emergency Medicine such an enjoyable field.

Dhriti Sooryakumar, MD

Member-at-Large

University of Michigan

Hello! My name is Dhriti Sooryakumar and I am a current resident physician at the University of Michigan. I went to medical school at Ohio State University and completed my Undergraduate and Master of Science Degrees in Biotechnology/Drug Development from Johns Hopkins University.

Prior to medical school, I was recipient of the National Institutes of Health/Johns Hopkins University Molecular Target and Drug Discovery Fellowship and worked at the National Cancer Institute developing novel anticancer drugs. I also served as Medical Program Advisor for the International Medical Organization, Global Brigades, in Honduras. I have been dedicated to SAEM over the past years and its incredible mission and vision to serve emergency medicine physicians and learners both nationally and internationally. I sincerely hope I may have the honor to continue serving you, my peers, as RAMS Board of Directors Member at Large.

I had the privilege to serve as Medical Student Representative on the RAMS Board of Directors from 2020-2021 and am thrilled with the great progress and novel initiatives I was able to create and implement for our Medical Student and Resident Members.

During my time on the RAMs Board, I was able to:

• Conceptualize the National Virtual Residency Fair held in July 2020.
• Create Underrepresented Minority Medical Education Scholarships which I successfully matched by our National Academies for the costs of national licensing exam costs and preparatory materials.
• Create multiple novel webinar series in tandem with SAEM leadership and faculty advising medical students, including one guiding medical students through the first Covid19 Residency Application Season, and another highlighting Women in Academic Emergency Medicine.

I have remained dedicated to the organization over the past two years, working on the development of novel medical education initiatives.

If re-elected, I would like to continue to represent the interests of my resident and medical student colleagues, and serve as the voice and bridge for resident and medical student needs with the national organization. I believe my past years of dedicated service to my medical student and resident peers on the RAMS Board of Directors, as well as my previous career experiences in leadership have prepared me well for this role.

If re-elected to the RAMS Board of Directors, I would like to:

• Continue developing and expanding national medical education and scholarship opportunities for our medical student and resident members.
• Create further national mentorship opportunities, especially for women, underrepresented minorities, students, and residents.
• Continue to work with the Board of Directors to create novel national clinical skills workshops, webinars, and educational series to enhance Medical Education and ease the residency application process/transition into residency and faculty positions.
• Work to expand exposure to/opportunities for Emergency Medicine fellowships and niche areas on a national level (for example Ultrasound, Critical Care, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and Social Emergency Medicine to name a few) with networking opportunities for residents and medical students.
• Work to create career-bolstering and professional development opportunities (e.g. negotiation skills workshops, CV building, networking events, and mentorship) for residents as they begin applying for faculty positions and fellowship.
• Create career-enhancing mentorship and professional development opportunities for medical students, including those geared towards under-represented minorities and students at orphan programs lacking traditionally-strong EM programs.
• Create initiatives to increase the emphasis on wellness within residency. This would include working to create national and regional wellness events for medical students and residents to attend.

I am very open to hearing from our resident and medical student members, and really hope to continue representing and serving your needs as a Resident Representative on the RAMS Board of Directors! Thank you for your consideration.

Genevieve Pentecost, MD

Member-at-Large

Washington University in St. Louis/Barnes-Jewish Hospital

My name is Genevieve Pentecost, I am a PGY-3 at Washington University in St. Louis and attended the University of Missouri-Columbia for my undergraduate and medical school education. For 3 years, I have serviced as a resident representative among several local institutional committee programs that advocate for the resident voice in assuring a safe and fair learning environment, residency recruitment and retention, and prioritizing resident and fellow wellness. For my final year in residency, I am turning my focus to broader issues facing trainees on the national scale.

As a RAMS Board Member-At-Large, I hope to advocate for a robust body of educational resources for resident members. I hope to create sustainable creation of RAMS-authored educational content, with a focus on widespread dissemination via social media, the SAEM/RAMS website, podcasting, and other FOAMed avenues. I will work to reinforce this educational content at the SAEM annual meeting, promoting high-quality didactic opportunities. Members should also have available professional development resources tailored to their unique stage in education and training. Most importantly, I believe SAEM/RAMS should prioritize a sustainable pipeline of diverse future emergency physicians when discussing research, advocacy, education, and policy objectives.

Although residents have unique educational and professional needs, we are not immune to the obstacles facing our specialty in emergency departments across the nation. The time is now to advocate for our interests in confronting these pivotal challenges. We must directly address the consequences of policy and lawmaking on patient outcomes, a national shortage of outpatient resources and resultant burdens imposed on the emergency department, an environment of boarding and overcrowding that threatens patient safety, continued job market variability and uncertainty, and the detrimental effects of the corporatization of emergency medicine on residency education and patient-centered care.

Protecting the education and training of the future leaders of emergency medicine is paramount to solving these issues. My goal is to foster pathways for trainees to thrive despite the specialty’s challenges, while moving the needle toward positive change. I am running for RAMS Board Member-At-Large to be a strong voice for emergency medicine residents—a voice that approaches tough conversations with an open mind, maintains a goal-direct approach to policy, and provides tangible outcomes in line with SAEM/RAMS values.

Mit Patel, MD

Member-at-Large

Henry Ford Hospital

I am applying for the SAEM Member-at-Large position because I believe I can strengthen the relationships that EM physicians maintain within and beyond their Department. To thrive in a lifelong healthcare career, I believe that all healthcare workers exercise curiosity, and to this end, professional organizations of each discipline (e.g., ANA for nursing, the APA for pharmacy, SAEM for EM, etc.) have built pathways channeling curiosity into inquiry into implementable solutions. As EM physicians, we naturally are multilingual in the language of healthcare. We understand that improvements in Door-to-Needle times, CLABSI rates, or Sepsis-related mortality, are achieved when working collaboratively. These avenues for collaboration present significant opportunities for personal growth for ourselves, professional development for our field and ultimately push the envelope forward on patient care. While individual RAMS members may be looking inward for novel ideas, I believe that sustained transformation in emergency care lies beyond traditional medical education. If elected, I will work on developing projects with input from our closest colleagues to achieve mutual goals for our organizations.

My name is Mit Patel, and I attended the Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago obtaining my BBA in Information Systems. I was a Research Assistant to multiple PI’s performing research on a variety of topics from the impact of Airbnb on the lodging industry to identifying outcomes in Kidney Transplantation, and even onto the impact of heterochromatin on the Human Genome. I spent all 4 years on the Board of the Hindu Students’ Organization, a religious and cultural organization under Campus Ministry, tasked with building an accepting interfaith community at Loyola. I obtained my MD at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Peoria where I gained an appreciation for Quality Improvement and Patient Safety and the tremendously impactful role that EM physicians play for healthcare organizations. Truthfully, the rigor of medical school was beyond my anticipation, and I found balancing academic clinical performance with research difficult. Now as a resident at Henry Ford Hospital, I’ve renewed my research endeavors by studying the impact of ED-initiated Buprenorphine on healthcare utilization, which I presented at the SAEM Midwest Regional Meeting in 2023. I have since led an investigator-initiated project examining the curricular effectiveness of a structured POCUS curriculum and a handheld ultrasound device on ultrasound usage by PGY-1 EM residents. I hope to present this research at the SAEM conference in 2024.

These scholarly activities have introduced to me an entirely new and previously obscured world within emergency medicine. Participation in these activities has made me a more complete physician, and I wish to engender professional development for future EM leaders as a Member-at-Large.

Garrison Nord, MD

Member-at-Large

Yale New Haven Hospital

Hello! My name is Garrison Nord, I am currently a PGY-3 at Yale and I am applying for a member-at-large position on the RAMS board. I completed medical school at Thomas Jefferson University in Philly. Before medical school I studied Finance at Villanova then worked in banking as a financial analyst at Wells Fargo for 4 years before transitioning careers.

My goal in serving on the RAMS board is to have the Emergency Department become a more optimal learning environment for students, residents and attendings. I believe we can be more proactive and should aim to meet the personal educational needs and goals of each of our learners amidst the unpredictable clinical environment. As a RAMS board member I aim to translate this goal by using the platforms such as Pulse, webinars, and social media to disseminate educational innovations and best practices, and promoting use of established SAEM resources. To that specific aim I am researching interventions to increase resident goal-setting and resident feedback. I hope to promote funding for and to conduct Educational research to assess strategies that maximize learning in our Emergency Departments.

I deeply enjoy teaching and the dynamics of the clinical and extra-clinical learning environment. To that end, I currently serve on Yale’s Resident and Medical Student Education committees. In these roles, I have spearheaded changes to our intern orientation curriculum and composed both new didactic and on-shift learning material. I previously served as a medical student liaison for a complete medical school curriculum change and published qualitative research on those results. These roles have given me insight into the process of graduate and undergraduate curriculum development as well as evaluation of medical student experiences. These experiences have made me comfortable acting as a representative for a larger body of students and learners and have made me an effective teammate and leader in my time serving on committees. These traits would serve me well on the RAMS board.

Juliet Jacobson, MD

Member-at-Large

New York Presbyterian - Cornell/Columbia

Before medical school I was a 6th grade math and science teacher to 120 students in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. I had felt so lucky for my own education that I knew I wanted to give back and focus on someone else’s education during my gap year. I learned quickly that teachers and learners tend to have a wall between them. As a teacher, my students often made assumptions that I knew things that I actually wasn’t privy to - how they were feeling, what they were thinking, or what they needed. However, most students never spoke up to tell me their concerns. I had to remind them to share the things they were thinking, so I could best support them. I worked everyday to gain a better understanding of where my students were as learners and as people. Just one month after I finished teaching, I started medical school. I went from being the teacher, back to the learner. I often heard my friends complain about something that a professor or administrator was doing. When I asked them if they told anyone about their concern they nearly always said “no, but I’m sure they know”. It made it even more clear to me how there is often a disconnect between teachers and learners, which leads to frustration and dissatisfaction all around.

Within two months at New York Medical College, I was elected to the school's curriculum committee where I became a liaison between students and faculty. I brought student concerns to faculty and brought faculty expertise back to students. It was no surprise to me that professors were thrilled to help the moment they got the feedback they had requested from students. During my time on the committee I learned so much about medical education. Together, we designed and implemented an entirely new systems-based and shortened preclinical curriculum. We created open feedback surveys and monthly town halls to help students and faculty share concerns and problem solve.

Now in residency, I help lead our residency recruitment board, I volunteer at college outreach programs, I speak and mentor at my own medical school, and I continue to have a passion for medical education. I want to be part of the SAEM RAMS board to support learners not just in medical school and residency but throughout their medical careers. I want to create tools and references that grow with us through all of the stages of our careers. I want to build virtual drives with easily accessible and shareable information between residency programs and for all EM physicians. I aim to find ways to make tools that can grow with our ever changing field and support people wherever they are, in whatever capacity they need.

Corey S. Hazekamp, MD, MS

Member-at-Large

NYC H+H/Lincoln Medical Center

My higher education began in Boulder, CO where I attended the University of Colorado as an undergraduate prior to matriculating at the University of Illinois in Chicago for medical school. Currently, I am a PGY-3 at Lincoln Medical Center in the South Bronx. My qualifications for the RAMS Board include strategic planning, experience with fundraising, and planning/development. While at the University of Colorado, I was president of the triathlon team which consisted of approximately 120 co-ed athletes. As president, I managed the team budget, organized weekly practices, and arranged travel to the regional and national championships. Prior to medical school I was a research coordinate for a PECARN investigator at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago. As such, I managed several IRBs and oversaw participant recruitment for two active studies. For over a decade, I have ridden in the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge, a bike-a-thon, which is the largest athletic fundraiser in the country, and I have personally raised over $50,000 for the Dana-Farber Cancer institute over this timespan. My planning and development skills have allowed me to write three IRBs during residency, all of which are approved; two of which are nearing completion.

My SAEM experience includes being granted a SAEM Foundation (SAEMF) sponsored National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) funded Mentor Facilitated Training (MFT) award in the Fall of 2021, during my intern year with Dr. Dana Sacco and Dr. Bernard Chang serving as my mentors. I have published multiple articles in the SAEM Pulse. Currently, I am a resident reviewer for the SAEM Grants Committee and am enrolled as a member of the 2023-2024 cohort for the SAEM Advanced Research Methodology Evaluation and Design course.

I am running for office to help improve the future of academic emergency medicine. Through participation in the SAEMF NIDA MFT award and the SAEM resident reviewer program, I have built a network of mentors within academic emergency medicine. As my career goals include remaining in academic emergency medicine and continuing with a focus on research, I hope to further advance the field of emergency medicine research. Several goals I hope to accomplish, if elected to the SAEM RAMS Board, are (1) increase interest in emergency medicine research starting at the medical student level, (2) help improve resources to aid residents with starting and completing research projects. and (3) increase access to mentorship and research funding for medical student and residents interested in research.

Hart L. Edmonson, MD

Member-at-Large

Northwestern University

Thank you for the opportunity to serve on the RAMS Board.

I took a non-traditional path to medicine, and was previously Chief of Staff to Congressman Denny Heck in the United States House of Representatives where I handled healthcare policy focused on implementation of the Affordable Care Act. I am an intern at McGaw Medical Center of Northwestern University and a graduate of the University of Washington School of Medicine.

On the RAMS Board, I hope to focus on promoting research as a tool for political advocacy. Informed by my prior career in policy, I want to connect residents and medical students to policymakers with the goal of translating research into policy changes. In medical school, I completed research on pharmacy label translation for patients with limited English proficiency. I used this research to inform direct legislative advocacy, working with other medical students to change state law to better support non-English speaking patients.

As a RAMS Board Member, I hope to find more ways to connect medical students and residents to their political leaders, and continue breaking down the silos between good research ideas and good policy ideas.

In this vein, I hope to work with other SAEM members to create a Policy and Advocacy Committee focused on fostering engagement and helping translate member research into public health outcomes. The committee could create training and engagement opportunities for SAEM residents and medical students interested in engaging with political leaders on important public health topics with relevance to emergency medicine.

Adding capabilities for interested medical students to engage with SAEM around public health topics will also serve as a recruitment tool for our field. I believe this will add another layer to SAEM’s strong work and commitment to addressing workforce issues and the recruitment of the next generation of EM leaders.

Finally, as a non-traditional medical student, a first-generation college student, and as a member of the LGBTQ community, I hope to set an example of openness and inclusivity for emerging EM leaders from diverse backgrounds, knowing that our field is best served by a diverse group of leaders and thinkers.

As an MS4, I was proud to earn the SAEM Medical Student Excellence Award at my medical school. I look forward to continuing my involvement in academic emergency medicine throughout residency and my career.

Lauren Diercks

Member-at-Large

UT-Southwestern

I have served on the RAMS Board for two years as the Medical Student Representative and would love to continue my contribution to SAEM as a Member at Large. My contributions to RAMS have included advocating for the member experience on the Membership Committee and creating initiatives to understand and support medical student engagement in EM.

My goal during my past term was to develop an understanding of medical student engagement in EM. To achieve this goal, I developed an EM interest group (EMIG) survey and initiated the RAMS Regional Ambassador Program that pairs RAMS Board members with each of the SAEM regions. The goals of this program are to better advocate and support the RAMS community, engage students in EM, and add value to the SAEM member experience. If elected to be a member at large, I would be excited to expand the Regional Ambassador Program to residents by providing SAEM mentorship opportunities, research support, and wellness strategies to supplement the incredible work of EM residency programs across the county. In my previous terms on the board, my goal was to advocate for RAMS and I am proud of the 2023-2024 board for creating initiatives to inspire genuine community and listening. Building on the foundation of two years of board experience, I hope to continue the legacy of what RAMS has built and expand it as a Member at Large.

John Dickens, MD, MBA

Member-at-Large

Northwestern University

I am currently a PGY-2 at Northwestern Memorial Hospital/McGaw Medical Center and hold an MD/MBA from the University of Louisville. Before entering the medical field, I worked as a Project Manager at Epic and at Emmi Solutions, a Population Health Management company. During my MBA program, I worked with Humana's Digital Health and Analytics Group, focusing on Remote Patient Monitoring & AI, and conducted research in the Emergency Department, focusing on novel handheld diagnostic technologies. Over the past two years, I've served as the Resident Liaison for the SAEM Clinical Informatics & Data Science Interest Group and on the RAMS Nominating Committee.

I am driven by a desire to help modernize Emergency Medicine by embracing creative solutions and advanced technologies. If elected as a member-at-large, I will work to empower residents with the essential skills, exposure, and knowledge required to excel in our ever-evolving healthcare landscape. This will involve promoting initiatives that facilitate hands-on training in innovative practices, technologies, and data-driven decision-making as well as creating opportunities for networking and professional leadership development. By serving on the board, my goal is to bridge the gap between tradition and innovation, ensuring that our specialty remains at the forefront of healthcare.

Aaron D'Amore, MD

Member-at-Large

Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency - Mass General Brigham

Throughout my training, I have had a deep devotion to equal and equitable treatment of all people, and I am running for RAMS Member at Large to continue that work at the national level. Prior to medical school, I worked as an Intramural Training Award Fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). At the NIH, I was working in community opioid agonist clinics studying the effects and treatment of opioid use disorder. Seeing first-hand how substance use disorder ravaged my community inspired me to go into emergency medicine, a field of medicine that treats all people regardless of creed or ability to pay. While in medical school, I was elected President of my class, and served for all four years of medical school. During that time, I developed core leadership techniques, serving on six school of medicine committees and acting as the liaison between my class and our administrators. I was also elected to the role of Vice President of our Alpha Omega Alpha chapter. Advocating for my peers in both roles was rewarding and exciting, as I was able to see the tangible fruits of my labor. At the end of my medical school journey, I was nominated and received several awards acknowledging my service to my community, including the ACEP/EMRA Medical Student Professionalism and Leadership Award, the William D. Kaplan, M.D. Humanism Award, RISE AAMC Leadership Conference Award Delegation, and the Student Service Award.

What all these experiences have taught me is that the best leaders are not the individuals who have power, but rather the individuals who can empower others. I hope to use my role as a RAMS Member at Large to do precisely that. As a leader, you must be flexible and team oriented. In a time where our specialty is under unprecedented pressure to hold up hospital systems that are at capacity, work on the front lines to advocate for our patients, and all the while receiving record low numbers of new applicants to the specialty, it is more important than ever to empower leaders who will use their voice for change. If elected for this role, I’d leverage my position to lift the voices of the unheard and act in the best interest of all emergency medicine trainees, just as I have in my prior roles. I’d make it my personal mission to tackle the major issues impacting our training, such as hospital boarding disasters, work conditions and mental health of trainees, resources for treating our underserved patients, and recruiting more medical students to our specialty. One project I hope to work on is recruiting residents across the country to help form templated health equity dot phrases that our members could copy into their own EMRs which would provide critical resources for discharge instructions and templated physical exams for patients who come in with a substance use disorder to reduce missing key physical exam findings on our patients. These are no easy feats, though, I am confident that with a stellar team, we will be able to make great progress.

Remember – D’Amore you want, D’Amore you get!

Alison Bonner, MD

Member-at-Large

New York Presbyterian - Cornell/Columbia

As a medical student at UNC Chapel Hill, I knew from day one that I would go into Emergency Medicine. The Emergency Department was where I realized I wanted to go into medicine, and I was constantly looking for reasons to spend more time there, whether as a volunteer, shadow student, scribe, or medical student. But during those years, I realized that teaching and advising other students was a major source of joy for me and would be a part of my future career as well. I have been lucky to lead EMIG and the student simulation lab, teach ultrasound sessions and clinical skills courses to pre-clinical students, and assist with interviews and transition point events, opportunities that have given me a view from the education administration side of each phase of medical student education.

Now that I have experience in classroom and bedside teaching, I would very much like to engage in education on a larger systemic scale. I think there is a great deal of variation in the exposure and experience of Emergency Medicine that medical students have at different institutions, and we may be missing students who might be interested in EM, but don’t have the same access to opportunities, and I think SAEM is in the perfect position to bring more students into the fold. I am currently working with other residents on preparing a guide for EM Interest Groups across the country to have a more standardized curriculum that would make it easier for students to establish and maintain EMIGs at their institutions and highlight the best of what Emergency Medicine has to offer as a specialty. If elected, I would continue to develop materials like this to draw students to Emergency Medicine and support their education and access to the field.

In addition, while Emergency Medicine is considered a specialty of trauma and resuscitation, one area I think is lacking universally in medical education is resilience and what to do after the resuscitation is over. Even when successful for the patient, this aspect of patient care can be traumatic for the providers and there is no formal education on how to manage the emotions and aftermath of these experiences. I believe this is a gap that can be filled though, and by working on this aspect of curriculum development through SAEM, it can be incorporated in Emergency Medicine education for both medical students and residents nationwide, with a hope to reduce burnout related to prolonged traumatic stress in the ED.

I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2023 after completing my Bachelor of Science with Distinction and Highest Honors and my Doctor of Medicine as a member of Alpha Omega Alpha. However, I consider my greatest accomplishment thus far to be the creation of my non-profit organization, Mission 34. Family and friends came together to build this organization in memory of my brother, Sean Bonner Jr., with a goal to eliminate the stigma around mental illness through awareness, education, and advocacy. I helped build Mission 34 from the start, creating the mission statement and other materials to establish the organization, identifying potential board members, and continue to assist in the development of our annual fundraising and awareness events, experiences that will be invaluable in future organizations as well. Although I have not had the chance to participate in SAEM previously, I hope between applying for RAMS and the wellness and education committees, I will be able to contribute to and shape the future of SAEM.

Daniel Jose Artiga, MD

Secretary-Treasurer

University of Cincinnati

My name is Daniel Artiga, and I am a PGY-2 at the University of Cincinnati and received my medical degree from the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine. I have been honored to serve on the RAMS Board the past two years and would love to continue strategic efforts as Secretary-Treasurer.

I was drawn to emergency medicine because of its critical roles as the frontline of healthcare. That responsibility is why we must protect our specialty’s future and advocate for our residents. I recognize SAEM-RAMS as the premiere academic organization to meet our specialty’s newest challenges, whether it is workforce demand-supply changes, widespread accreditation of residencies, or changing common program requirements. The SAEM conference is the best example of this. Last year with the RAMS Resident Labor Task Force, we developed a didactic to inform members of the historical aspects of resident labor rights and its impact on unionization efforts today.

The rest of the year outside of conference however, we interface with our members in online spaces. That is why I have had a pointed focus with the Virtual Presence committee to develop online materials and meet members where they already are. We launched our Instagram this past year. We are streamlining our educational podcasts series so they are more easily accessible. I will be hosting the second round of the Ask-a-Chair podcast, which recounts how some of the most successful EM physicians maneuvered their careers and made departmental impacts. We are continuing our RAMS Financial Literacy webinar series to help cover key financial planning strategies and payment models our members need to understand as physicians. These projects all serve our goal in supporting our members with educational resources and forums to navigate training opportunities, fellowship, and their early years as attendings.