Emergency care is a critical component of developed health care systems. While primarily focused on the evaluation and treatment of acute conditions, emergency care also provides additional opportunities to provide important public health functions, such as injury prevention and the slowing of disease progression. Emergency care provides access to health care services, known to be a crucial determinant of population health. Despite the crucial function that emergency care plays in decreasing morbidity and mortality, it has been frequently overlooked in the discussion of health systems and delivery platforms, particularly in developing countries.
The Department of Emergency Medicine of the University of Maryland School of Medicine is an international leader in emergency care education and emergency care operations. Faculty within the Department have had NIH grant funded work overseas for over 7 years.
The mission of the Section of Global Emergency Health is to ensure efficient, effective, timely access to life-saving services is universally accessible to all.
The Section of Global Emergency Health within Department of Emergency Medicine of the University of Maryland School of Medicine promotes access to life saving care in all places at all times. The Section provides focus, strategy and support for University of Maryland’s Emergency Medicine Networks’ effort to improve health globally.
The Section:
Delivers outstanding operational implementation, including rigorous evaluation necessary to demonstrate proof.
Supports training of clinicians, managers and others to comprehensively improve performance of national health systems.
Provides action-oriented research to define adaptive solutions that reach all people, effectively and efficiently.
Promotes access to essential emergency services in all places at all times.
The Section recognizes the core foundation of all global engagement supports both ideological and practice based rights of the people – individuals, families and communities. That foundation recognizes the capacity, resiliency and creativity of the local community and endorses collaboration with institutions, states and regions seeking to better health outcomes.
All interventions will be planned, evaluated and measured in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, quality and inclusiveness. Intention is necessary but ultimately insufficient. The section’s benchmark will be in achieving the desired outcomes and not focus solely on implementation
The primary role of scholarship is to catalyze sustainable and scalable change that expands frontiers of health system performance. Collaboration with global stakeholders and partners (other medical specialties, academic, local, governmental, non-governmental) is essential both to discovery and lasting change.
The Section maintains that information sharing is vital to global health practice. Advocacy for pragmatic implementation of best practices, policies and priorities ensures implementation and sustainability of critical health interventions.