Co-authored by Amir Jaffer, M.D., chief of the Division of Hospital Medicine, nine physician colleagues and a nurse administrator, all from UHealth, and a Miami Children's Hospital pediatrician, the article "An Academic Center's Delivery of Care After the Haitian Earthquake," serves as a guide for medical centers interested in delivering emergent trauma care following future natural disasters. The co-authors volunteered in Haiti or at the command center at the Miller School.

The article chronicles how the four-tent field hospital and hundreds of volunteer responders were organized to coordinate emergency care for thousands of survivors. It also notes the critical role of the University's longstanding relationship with Haitian physicians through Project Medishare, and the Haiti Relief Task Force, which established a command center on the medical school campus to coordinate flights to deliver personnel and supplies to the devastated nation.

UM's post-quake experience, the authors wrote, "demonstrates that academic medical centers in close geographic proximity to natural disasters can help deliver effective medical care through a coordinated process involving mobilization of their own resources, establishment of focused management teams at home and on the ground with formal organizational oversight, and partnership with governmental and nongovernmental relief agencies."

The article notes that within 12 days after the earthquake volunteer doctors performed more than 200 lifesaving surgeries. But amid the successes, the authors say, were several valuable lessons. Among them was the importance of having an organizational structure for disaster response in place before disaster strikes. They also cited a need for first responders fluent in the local language, a better system of securing voluntary radiographic technicians, and immediate pre- and post-deployment counseling for volunteers.

"Despite the limitations and gaps we have outlined, we feel our intervention was successful and that university-based medical health care systems can play an important role in disaster relief," the article concludes. "Our prior relationship with Project Medishare highlights the benefit of academic health centers having established relationships with foreign countries on which disaster response can be built."

In addition to Jaffer, the authors included from UHealth: Rafael Campo, M.D., professor of clinical medicine and medical director for Employee Health and Infection Control; Greg Gaski, M.D., orthopaedic resident; Ralf Gebhard, M.D., associate professor of clinical anesthesiology; Enrique Ginzburg, M.D., professor of surgery; Michael Kolber, M.D., Ph.D., professor of medicine and director of the Comprehensive AIDS Program; John Macdonald, M.D., voluntary assistant professor of dermatology and cutaneous surgery; Steven Falcone, M.D., M.B.A., associate vice president for medical affairs and chief operating officer for the University of Miami Medical Group; Barth Green, M.D., professor and chair of neurological surgery; William O'Neill, M.D., executive dean for clinical affairs and chief medical officer for UHealth; and Lazara Barreras-Pagan, R.N., BHSA., chief operating and nursing officer for University of Miami Hospital and Clinics, and, from Miami Children's Hospital, Mario Reyes, M.D.

"The Miller School's successful early post-disaster relief effort would not have been possible without Dr. Green and Project Medishare's established relationship with Haiti, the leadership of Dr. O'Neill and Dean Pascal J. Goldschmidt, M.D., along with the teamwork and dedication of hundreds of dedicated UM and non-UM volunteers both in Miami and Haiti, our donors and resources provided by the University," Jaffer said. "Our experience in Haiti is now available to other academic centers to emulate at times of future disasters."

The article is also scheduled to appear in the journal's August 17 print edition.