2018 NBATA Education Program: CPR for Healthcare Provider
Joseph M. Weber, MD, is one of the four EMS medical directors for the city of Chicago EMS system, co-lead for the Prehospital Sphere of Illinois Heart Rescue, assistant professor of emergency medicine at Rush Medical College and an attending emergency medicine physician at Stroger Cook County Hospital in Chicago.
Paul E. Pepe, M.D., M.P.H., a Professor with Tenure in Internal Medicine, Surgery, Pediatrics, Public Health & Emergency Medicine (EM) at UT Southwestern, is also the EMS Medical Director for Dallas County and Regional Director for Out-of-Hospital Mobile Care Systems and Disaster/Event Preparedness in the UTSW Office of Health System Affairs.
An extremely distinguished academician, he headed the clinical, administrative, academic and research programs in EM at UT Southwestern between 2000 and 2014 and was EM Chair at the Medical College of Pennsylvania Pittsburgh campus in the 1990s.
With over 400 full-length published scientific papers, including many landmark publications, Dr. Pepe has served simultaneously as a high-level municipal or state employee for over three decades. Renown for a grass-roots, street-wise style in planning, implementing and overseeing a systems approach to saving lives, both operationally and through clinical trials, his programs have resulted in some of the highest cardiac arrest and trauma survival rates worldwide. In addition to the Chain of Survival publication, he is known for his original measurements of physiological mechanisms (eg, Auto-PEEP), intrepid clinical concepts (eg, deferred rescue breaths in CPR), and ground-breaking clinical trials (eg, deferred IV fluids for trauma). Published years ago by Dr. Pepe & colleagues, these studies are now part of mainstream medical practice and research.
Many of his numerous studies, injury prevention programs and media interactions have consistently affected public policy and legislation. Helping to set national priorities for cardiac and trauma resuscitation research, the NIH formally designated his EM program at UT as a federally-funded resuscitation research center in 2004, a very successful program that continued throughout his entire tenure as the division chair of Emergency Medicine.
Over his career, he served as an assistant to the medical directors of the Seattle Fire Department EMS (1977-82), as Director for the City of Houston EMS System (1982-96) and as Commonwealth Emergency Medical Director for Pennsylvania under Governor Tom Ridge in the late 1990s. In addition, Dr. Pepe has served for years as emergency medicine-trauma consultant to various entities such as the White House Medical Unit, U.S. Secret Service (USSS), FBI, NIH, FDA, network news organizations, and even the National Basketball Association Trainers. He coordinates the so-called Eagles consortium, a cohesive and highly-influential de facto coalition of the jurisdictional 9-1-1 (EMS) system medical directors for the nation’s 40-50 largest cities and pivotal federal agencies (eg, FBI, USSS, ATF, DHS, HHS, White House Medical Unit).
An omnipresent global lecturer, he has won numerous health policy, community service, scientific, educational and professional society awards, here and abroad, including distinguished alumnus awards and a formal citation for courage and life-time public service in the U.S. Congressional Record. He was recently nominated ’Texan of the Year’ and was elected to Mastership in the American College of Physicians (MACP) for numerous lifetime achievements in Internal Medicine and received similar recognition in 2014 from the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine for lifetime achievements and excellence in research . In 2016, he was designated as a Master of Critical Care Medicine (MCCM) by the Society for Critical Care Medicine and American College of Critical Care Medicine (ACCM).
Often featured on network news and prime-time broadcasts (e.g., Rescue 9-1-1 pilot, ABC News Nightline special, ’In the ER’, TLC’s award-winning, ’The Strongest Link’, and Larry King Live), he has been called a ’Mentor to Millions’ and an ’Advocate for the Injured’. When receiving a major national award a decade ago in Washington, DC for lifetime professional achievements (presented by then U.S. Surgeon General, Richard Carmona, on behalf of the American College of Emergency Physicians), Dr. Pepe was cited as the most accomplished emergency medical services physician of our generation.