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President’s Comments Strengthening Collaboration With the Office of Emergency Care Research
Angela M. Mills, MD
As an academic medical specialty, emergency medicine (EM) has an obligation to research discovery to improve the care we deliver to our patients. As one of our four main strategic plan goals, SAEM strives to increase the impact, productivity, implementation, and visibility across the spectrum of emergency care research. On current review of national medical school data of clinical specialties, EM ranks last in the percentage of faculty who are National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded principal investigators (PIs) as well as in the percentage of departments with NIHfunded PIs. In response, the Association of Academic Chairs of Emergency Medicine (AACEM) Research Task Force recently published proposed 2030 strategic goals endorsed by SAEM.
The culmination of more than five years of discussions between the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the emergency medicine community, the Office of Emergency Care Research (OECR) was announced in July 2012. SAEM was a strong advocate for the creation of the OECR to further emergency care research, and SAEM continues to support the OECR’s work through collaboration with its leadership. As emergency medicine does not have its own NIH institute or dedicated funding through the OECR, support for EM researchers from the OECR is critical to ensure emergency care researchers are applying for grants and are competitive for funding at other institutes.
In early June 2022, as SAEM President, I traveled to Bethesda, MD in a group with three SAEM leaders to meet with OECR leadership. After sharing SAEM’s strategic plan for research and our initiatives to meet the proposed NIH 2030 goals, we heard about OECR’s objectives, initiatives, and progress to date. Together, we discussed how we can move emergency care research forward and worked to develop action items for increased collaboration between our two groups. Immediate action items include quarterly meetings between OECR leadership and the SAEM Executive Committee, recurring articles in SAEM Pulse on OECR updates and related topics (see their first article on page 26 of this issue of SAEM Pulse), and compiling OECR resources to share with our membership. Longer term action items include: OECR hosting an Annual Topical Workshop at SAEM meetings; OECR participation in the 2024 SAEM Consensus Conference on Diversifying Federally Funded Researchers; OECR presenting virtual training for SAEM members on access to the NIH system and successful applications for grant funding; OECR organizing meetings with SAEM and other NIH institutes to discuss EM funding and research training programs. These immediate and longer-term action items will allow for the continued advancement of research discovery for our specialty. I am excited and hopeful about this strengthened collaboration to continue advancing this critical mission for SAEM, our members, and the patients and communities our members serve.
ABOUT DR. MILLS: Angela M. Mills, MD, is the J. E. Beaumont professor and chair of the department of emergency medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians & Surgeons and chief of emergency services for NewYork-Presbyterian –Columbia
