Buffalo EMSA - Buffalo, N.Y.

American Medical Response of Western New York (AMR-WNY) provides emergency medical services (EMS) for the city of Buffalo and many of its surrounding suburbs and covers a 1,243-square-mile-region. AMR-WNY serves just under 1 million people and approximately 9 percent of their patients are children. They respond to over 120,500 calls per year resulting in approximately 95,000 transports. AMR-WNY provides primary response and transport for all 911 requests for aid, and depending on the type of call responds with local fire departments. The agency provides both ALS and BLS level care and employs over 310 providers. Prehospital providers transport patients to 13 area hospitals that include two level-one trauma centers. The majority of pediatric patients are transported to Oishei Children’s Hospital, which is the only tertiary care children’s hospital in the region.

The project is led by E. Brooke Lerner, PhD, professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at the University at Buffalo. Lerner is a professor of emergency medicine at the University at Buffalo. She is an injury epidemiologist and a former EMS field provider who has dedicated her career to improving prehospital care through research. She has nearly 20 years of EMS related experience, has received several million dollars in federal funding for EMS research and has authored over 130 peer-reviewed publications. She is or has been on boards for several national organizations including the National Association of EMS Physicians, Brain Trauma Foundation and the National Disaster Life support Foundation. Dr. Lerner was the primary investigator for PECARN’s Prehospital Infrastructure Project.

Michelle Larimore is the nodal administrator of the Charlotte, Houston, and Milwaukee Prehospital Research Node (CHaMP). She graduated from Daemen University with a Master of Public Health degree, specializing in community health education. Larimore has experience in program coordinating and grant management through previous roles in non-communicable disease prevention and refugee post-resettlement programming. She is currently the lead research coordinator for a multi-center NIH R01 study, Feasibility and Budget PECARN Subcommittee Co-Chair, and Dissemination Work Group member.

Dr. Chadha is the associate fellowship program director and a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University at Buffalo’s Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. He is also an attending physician and Emergency Department trauma liaison at the Oishei Children’s Hospital in Buffalo, NY. He received his MD from Ross University School of Medicine in 2010 and completed his residency at the University at Buffalo. Dr. Chadha was recently awarded the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences Emergency Medicine Residency Teaching Attending of the Year.

Anna-Kay Adamson-McDonald is a research coordinator for UBMD Emergency Medicine. She earned a Master of Arts degree from the University at Buffalo in February 2021. While attending school, Adamson-McDonald was a research apprentice for an NIH-funded study at Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center where she abstracted data from patients’ medical records for epidemiological analyses. Adamson-McDonald currently helps coordinate multiple research studies in two emergency departments in Buffalo and manages the research associate program in the department.