Pediatric Readiness in the Emergency Department, Operationalizing Equity in Clinical Guidance – Episode 288

Dr. Kate Remick is associate professor and associate chair for Quality, Innovation and Outreach in the Department of Pediatrics, at Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin, Co-Director of the National EMS for Children Innovation and Improvement Center, Co-Director of the National Pediatric Readiness Project, Executive Director of the National Pediatric Readiness Quality Initiative, and Medical Director for several EMS agencies in Hays County, Texas.  Using quality improvement science as an underpinning of her work, Dr. Remick focuses on health systems research and implementation science to enhance emergency care outcomes for children. Dr. Remick has led numerous large-scale national quality improvement collaboratives that have engaged hundreds of frontline healthcare providers, hospitals, and EMS agencies across the United States and abroad. Her work transects policy development, survey design, advocacy, health system transformation, and the creation of data visualization platforms and registries to ensure system-level readiness and, ultimately, high-quality emergency care for children.   

Dr. Joseph Wright is Senior Vice President and Chief Health Equity Officer of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP). With more than 30 years of experience in academic health systems, Dr. Wright previously served as a Chief Medical Officer within the University of Maryland Medical System, as tenured Professor and Chair of Pediatrics at the Howard University College of Medicine and spent two decades in senior leadership at Children's National Hospital where he provided strategic direction for community partnerships, public policy positions and launched the Child Health Advocacy Institute. He contemporaneously served 17 years as the State EMS Medical Director for Pediatrics within the Maryland Institute for Emergency Medical Services Systems and currently maintains appointments as adjunct professor of emergency medicine, pediatrics and health policy at the George Washington University Schools of Medicine and Public Health. Dr. Wright has chaired the AAP’s Committee on Pediatric Emergency Medicine, Task Force on Addressing Bias and Discrimination, Board of Director’s Committee on Equity and has been recognized for long-standing leadership as recipient of career achievement awards for humanitarianism, injury prevention and emergency medicine.  

Dr. Elyse Portillo is an assistant professor of pediatric emergency medicine dedicated to improving health equity, particularly for patients and families facing communication barriers. She has completed specialized advocacy training and a faculty health equity research scholars’ program. During her training, Dr. Portillo earned grants to develop evidence-based guidelines for newly arrived immigrant patient care and to study the impact of language on pediatric emergency department (PED) revisits. This led to a quality improvement project to enhance PED discharge communication which was recognized as an American Board of Pediatrics Exemplar. Dr. Portillo is committed to addressing system-level inequities in clinical care and research. She leads a multi-site study aimed at better identifying interpretation needs in the PED and serves as a key Co-Investigator for an upcoming Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN) trial to improve interpreter use in pediatric emergency settings. Nationally, she chairs the PECARN Disparities Working Group and oversaw a modified Delphi process resulting in publication of “Research Priorities for Pediatric Emergency Care to Address Disparities by Race, Ethnicity, and Language”; she also lends her expertise to the American Academy of Pediatrics Rapid Revision Team to ensure equity in clinical guidelines. She earned a Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute grant to improve inclusive enrollment in a clinical trial and leads equity and community engagement efforts for an NIH-funded pain trial. She also serves as Health Equity lead for the Gulf 7 Pediatric Disaster Network and for her PECARN node, and locally, as Director of Population Health for her division.