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2018 Winner: Eric Goralnick, MD, MS

Medical Director of Emergency Preparedness, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Instructor of Health Policy and Management, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

Collaborators

Edward J. Caterson, MD, PhD
Co-Investigator, Plastic Surgery, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Adil Haider, MD, MPH
Trauma, Burn and Critical Care Surgeon, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Mitchel B. Harris, MD
Co-director, Stepping Strong Center, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Chief, Department of Orthopaedics, Massachusetts General Hospital

Justin McCarty, MD
2018-19 Stepping Strong Trauma Fellow, Brigham and Women’s Hospital

Project

Developing Common Standards for Disaster Medicine

Sadly, mass casualty incidents due to terror attacks and natural disasters are on the rise. Eric Goralnick, MD, MS, and his team, secured a second round of Innovator Award funding to address this deadly public health crisis with a two-pronged approach: applying lessons learned in the aftermath of mass casualty incidents; and empowering civilians to stop the bleed.

Applying Lessons Learned. An important part of emergency preparedness is reviewing medical response to terror incidents and applying lessons learned following the incident. To that end, Goralnick and his collaborators have launched “GO Team,” whereby an international group of experts perform a standardized, academically rigorous, timely review of response to an urban terror event. Current initiatives include a study of the terror attacks in Boston, Paris, and Brussels and a focus group with 10 representative physicians from urban terror events around the globe—all with a goal of creating a recovery checklist for medical directors in the wake of these devastating occurrences.

Stopping the Bleed. Knowing that uncontrolled bleeding is a leading cause of mortality, Goralnick and his team launched several initiatives to empower laypeople as first responders in trauma settings. One is a study with civilian and military researchers to determine the most effective methods for training laypeople to apply tourniquets; another is a follow-up evaluation to determine retention of skills; and a third involves a consensus-driven national bleeding control research agenda to facilitate best practices. With Stepping Strong funding, Goralnick’s team has trained 560 employees at Gillette Stadium in emergency response. The team aspires to bring the training program to sports arenas across the country.

Biography

Eric Goralnick, MD, MS, is medical director of emergency preparedness at BWH, associate clinical director of the BWH Emergency Department, and medical director for all concerts and New England Patriots’ football games at Gillette Stadium. Goralnick graduated from the United States Naval Academy and served as a Surface Warfare Officer. Goralnick, who has lectured nationally and internationally on emergency preparedness, was among those who responded in the immediate aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombings. He has also facilitated multiple debriefs and interviews of key personnel involved in the response.

RELATED ARTICLES:
A Conversation with Eric Goralnick: Facilitating Translation of Emergency Care Innovations in Military and Civilian Communities
Defining a Research Agenda for Layperson Prehospital Hemorrhage Control
Preparing for the Next Terrorism Attack: Lessons From Paris, Brussels, and Boston
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training strategies in the times of COVID-19: a systematic literature review comparing different training methodologies
Telemedicine Use in Disasters: A Scoping Review

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