Department Blog

Clinical Associate Professor Zachary Dezman, MD, MS, participated in panel discussions as part of “Understanding Fatal Overdoses to Inform Product Development and Public Health Interventions to Manage Overdose” March 8-9, a virtual program hosted by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the Reagan-Udall Foundation for the FDA to explore clinical and public health responses to fatal overdoses of fentanyl and other street drugs.

Associate Professor Ben Lawner, DO, MS, was an invited speaker at the annual conference of the National Collegiate EMS Foundation held Feb. 24-26, 2023 in Boston. Dr. Lawner lectured on mass casualty triage and transport, and hosted ECG and intubation skills labs at the conference, which drew more than 1,000 campus-based EMS providers from across the country.

EM faculty led the development of two recent issues of Emergency Medicine Clinics of North America. Assistant Professor Kim Boswell, MD, was a guest editor of the February 2023 issue on Trauma Emergencies, with authors including Associate Professors Wendy Chang, MD and Dan Haase, MD, Assistant Professors Jennifer Guyther, MD and Ashley Menne, MD, and senior resident Rachel Wiltjer, DO. Assistant Professor Leen Alblaihed, MBBS, MHA, was a guest editor of the November 2022 issue on Cardiovascular Emergencies. The issue included articles by Professor Michael Bond, MD, Assistant Professor Kami Hu, MD, EM physicians Tareq Al-Salamah, MD, MPH, and Phil Magidson, MD, MPH, and residency grads Robert Brown, MD, Aki Honasoge, MD, and Jobin Philip, MD.

Dean Mark T. Gladwin, MD, delivered the keynote address at the first Emergency Medicine Translational Research conference, presented jointly by the Eureka Institute for Translational Medicine and the National Foundation of Emergency Medicine (NFEM) Feb. 1-3 in San Diego. Speakers from the Department of Emergency Medicine included Professor and Chair Brian J. Browne, MD, Professor and Director of Research Stephen R. Thom, MD, PhD, and Associate Professor Gentry Wilkerson, MD. Attending the conference as invited scholars were Department of Emergency Medicine assistant professors J. David Gatz, MD, Dan Gingold, MD, MPH, and Alexis Salerno, MD, and clinical assistant professor Zachary Dezman, MD, MS.

Clinical Assistant Professor Kyle R. Fischer, MD, MPH, Clinical Associate Professor Zachary Z.W. Dezman, MD, MS, and Research Associate Benoit Stryckman, MA, are among the authors of Illicit Fentanyl Exposure Among Victims of Violence, published Dec. 8, 2022 in the Journal of Surgical Research. This study found that patients injured by violence who used illicit fentanyl had higher rates of ventilator usage, more ICU admissions, and more trauma center encounters than violent injury victims who did not use fentanyl. The authors suggest fentanyl testing of patients injured by violence could identify candidates for violence prevention services and substance abuse treatment.

Assistant Professors Afrah A. Ali, MBBS, Brian Corwell, MD, and Angela Smedley, MD are named “Top Docs” for emergency medicine in Baltimore Magazine’s 2022 survey of physicians throughout Central Maryland.

Associate Professor Ben Lawner, DO, EMT-P, was an invited speaker at the Maryland Resuscitation Academy held Nov. 29-30 at the Howard County Public Safety Training Center in Marriottsville, MD. Dr. Lawner lectured on airway management strategies and the post cardiac arrest syndrome to fire department and public safety professionals from across the country.

Clinical Assistant Professor Jason Adler, MD, received the Challenge Coin award from the Emergency Department Practice Management Association. The award recognizes Dr. Adler’s numerous presentations, podcasts, and workshops for emergency physicians’ groups in many states to ready them for the “generational change” to new guidelines (effective Jan. 1, 2023) for documenting patient encounters and medical decision making in the emergency department.

“If you think health care is dysfunctional now, just wait until after January 1,” by Assistant Professor Gregory Jasani, MD, is one of the six most-read First Opinion essays of 2022 on STAT, a leading health and medicine journalism website. The article warns that with proposed cuts to Medicare reimbursements, "emergency departments might soon be filled with more and more people who can’t access primary care." (The proposed cuts were lessened but not eliminated.)

David E. Marcozzi, MD, Professor of Emergency Medicine, is the new Associate Dean for UMMC Clinical Affairs in the School of Medicine, UMSOM Dean Mark T. Gladwin, MD has announced.

As Associate Dean, Dr. Marcozzi will collaborate with UMMC clinical and finance leaders on service delivery innovations to strengthen support for clinical and academic medicine. He will continue in his roles as chief clinical officer and senior vice president of UMMC. Dr. Marcozzi joined the Department of Emergency Medicine in 2016 and has served as COVID-19 Incident Commander for both the UMB campus and the University of Maryland Medical System, and as senior medical advisor for COVID-19 to Governor Larry Hogan.