Our public health mission is closely linked to the public health mission of many groups, including those at the community, county and university levels. That’s why I frequently attend meetings watching for chances to work together. I also try to connect public health students with people in our shop doing cutting edge work.
Working together is a win-win…we get more great public health work accomplished, we help save more lives, and it benefits their education. It’s exciting when it works out. Two great examples of this teamwork are University of Arizona students receiving “Best Young Investigator Awards” from the American Heart Association’s Resuscitation Science Symposium. This is a really prestigious honor and we got two this year! One from a public health student Nate Heagerty who was working with our EMS and Trauma shop studying cardiac arrest survivors treated using hypothermia and when patients woke up after cardiac arrest. This has huge implications for our cardiac center program and how they take care of folks inside the hospital.
The other is from the work of Aaron Dunham – a UA med student working with our EMS and Trauma team studying traumatic brain injury. Aaron compared vital signs recorded electronically in the field with those recorded by EMS providers. His study has huge implications for treatment and outcome of traumatic brain injury victims and works into our EPIC Project. Both Nate and Aaron will receive their prestigious awards at the AHA meeting in November in Dallas. Congratulations to both of them and the entire Bureau of EMS and Trauma team who have mentored them!
