YSM Emergency Medicine Experts Make Global Impact

The impact of Yale School of Medicine’s (YSM) Department of Emergency Medicine transcends borders. YSM experts are leading numerous global health initiatives and reshaping how emergency medicine is delivered around the world. Here are three ways in which they are making a difference.

When you walk into the emergency department of other countries, it is probable that you might be treated by someone that has not been trained in emergency medicine. “We take that for granted here in the United States,” says Eleanor Reid, MD, PhD, assistant professor of emergency medicine.

In Greece, physicians can get trained in emergency medicine through a fellowship after completing residency in another specialty. However, less than 10% of doctors in emergency departments have completed this training.

Reid and her colleagues have been advocating for the establishment of Greece’s first emergency medicine residency. Her team conducted a survey of physicians practicing in Greek emergency departments on their gaps in training. Then, through collaboration with the Yale School of Management, they created a model which showed that training a cohort of emergency physicians could reduce the staffing needs of emergency departments.

The Greek Ministry of Health recently gave permission to start Greece’s first emergency medicine residency.

“This is still in the very, very early days, but I would estimate that it will be happening in the next year,” Reid says. “Being a part of that transition is super exciting.”

Palliative care in Greece, says Reid, is also underdeveloped. She is especially excited about a pilot project she is involved in to create palliative care hubs within emergency departments.

Emergency departments in Greece are often not open seven days a week. “So the idea is to, on the off days, have a palliative care hub where patients with incurable disease can come in for anything from pain management to minor procedures, and that links to social work, chaplains, and other allied health professionals,” Reid says.

As part of the pilot, Reid’s team is training emergency physicians in primary palliative care. And they’re studying the outcomes, including patient and family satisfaction, emergency department readmission rates, and staff wellness.

Sharon Anoush Chekijian, MD, associate professor of emergency medicine, has led many emergency systems development projects in Armenia. Armenian by background, she is an active member of the Stroke Initiative Advisory Task-Force for Armenia and the Armenian Stroke Council. And she was appointed to advise the Armenia Ministry of Health on stroke care optimization within the emergency system.

At the time of her appointment, however, emergency medicine was not an established specialty in Armenia.

In 2020, Chekijian won a Fulbright scholarship to address this gap. In collaboration with the YSM Department of Emergency Medicine and the Armenian National Institute of Health, her team started the Yale Unified Armenian Emergency Medicine Residency Program. The 18-month program launched in 2023 for physicians from public and private hospitals around the country. To enroll, doctors had to be already certified in a primary specialty and currently practicing in the emergency system in either pre-hospital or in-hospital emergency care.

“Even though residents come from different specialties, all of them have in common that they were already working in this emergency space,” says Chekijian. “They just didn’t have the formal training. This program gives them knowledge based in didactic teaching to propel their care towards excellence.”

The residency program graduated 11 members in April 2025 (pictured above). Its second class is starting up this fall. “It’s really growing. We have 40 residents in this class,” Chekijian says.

Her team hopes to identify especially exceptional graduates to serve as future faculty in a longer, four-year residency program to begin in 2027. Chekijian is also an honorary founding member of Armenia’s first specialty organization for emergency medicine, and they recently joined the European Union Society of Emergency Medicine which will give them access to previously untapped collaborators and training opportunities.

Furthermore, Chekijian has recently been appointed as chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the National Institute of Health in Armenia. She hopes her work in Armenia will empower the next generation of physicians to carry emergency medicine forward.

“The number-one thing that excites me is seeing the people we trained take the reins and be independent,” she says. “Emergency care provides security against threats of disaster and conflict. It’s my contribution towards national security and public health in Armenia. I’m grateful to have the support of Yale to leverage the resources here to improve care globally.”

Hani Mowafi, MD, associate professor of emergency medicine, is focused on developing emergency and acute care capacity in low- and middle-income countries, primarily in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Over the past several years, he has transitioned from delivering services on the ground to health system capacity building. Currently, he holds two National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants in partnership with American University of Beirut.

One of these grants is for the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Program for Advanced Injury Research (MENA PAIR), which is training researchers around the MENA region in injury research methods. “We’re trying to help put together a new cadre of researchers dedicated to injury, which is a neglected problem in global health,” Mowafi says.

Despite remaining a major public health problem, injuries are under-researched compared to other areas of public health such as infectious disease and nutrition, Mowafi says.

“For a long time, people thought of injuries as accidents, or acts of fate, when they really tend to be predictable and preventable,” he says. “They are related to certain populations, risk factors, and aspects of the environment that are modifiable to reduce the impact of these injuries.”

Furthermore, these injuries tend to especially impact young, healthy people and have consequences for years or even decades later. “If you can bend that injury curve on the front end, it has the potential for a lot of benefit down the line,” he says.

The second grant is for developing the Global Environmental and Occupational Health (GEOHealth) program, which is a hub for public health researchers focused on environmental occupational exposures faced by agricultural workers in Lebanon. Many of these workers are refugees that have been displaced due to nearby conflicts. Mowafi is also creating an occupational health fellowship to enable physicians to receive additional training.