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Thomas D. Kirsch
Department of Emergency Medicine, the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
Department of International Health, the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Phone: 410-614-5665 E-mail: tkirsch1@jhmi.edu
Tom Kirsch is currently the Director of the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and the Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response. He is a board-certified emergency physician and expert in disaster planning and response, wilderness medicine and health care management.
Dr. Kirsch has served as the National Physician Advisor for the American Red Cross Disaster Health Services, and has consulted on disaster-related issues for the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Pan American Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance of the United States Agency for International Development. He has real-life disaster experience from local incidents to hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the NYC response to the 9-11 terrorist attacks, the earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and New Zealand and the 2010 floods in Pakistan. Most recently he served as a consultant to the Departments of State and Defense to assess the entire US government’s response to the Haitian earthquake. He has extensive business experience including positions as the Chair of Emergency Medicine at Michael Reese Hospital, the Vice President and Medical Director of a hospital management company and founding an emergency physician management group.
Dr. Kirsch is the author of 50 scientific articles (most as either first or senior author), dozens of abstracts and 14 textbook chapters. He is also authored the disaster medical textbook (VanRooyen-Kirsch-Emergent Field Medicine). He has presented at numerous national and international conferences. He serves on the Editorial Board for the American Medical Association’s journal, Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness and is a reviewer for the American Journal of Public Health, Annals of Emergency Medicine, Emergency Medicine Reports and the Annals of Emergency Medicine and was the editor of the international section of the Annals of Emergency Medicine from 1995-2000. His research activities focus on: 1. Developing methods to measure the impact and quality of disaster response; 2. Working with the engineering community to assessing the impact on, and resiliency of healthcare systems in disaster (particularly earthquakes); 3. Creating physiologic triage tools to improve hospital resource utilization in a disaster response.
His educational activities include co-founding and directing the Resurrection Emergency Medicine Residency Program in 1997-99 and teaching the medical specialty of Emergency Medicine for more than 20 years in Baltimore, Chicago and Phoenix. In addition to teaching medical students and residents emergency medicine, he currently teaches the masters-level courses Introduction to Humanitarian Emergencies and Public Health Methods in Disasters at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and Wilderness Medicine at the School of Medicine and directs a Disaster Fellowship. Dr. Kirsch has served as the mentor for dozens of medical and graduate students. His students have gone on to careers with the American Medical Association, The Centers for Disease Control, the World Health Organization and as academicians at Johns Hopkins, University of Maryland, University of Illinois, George Washington University and others.
Education:
M.P.H., Epidemiology, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, 1986
M.D., University of Nebraska Medical Center, 1984
B.A., Fine Arts, Creighton University, 1980
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