Professor of Emergency Medicine and Associate Chair of Research Affairs
Department of Emergency Medicine, Medical College of Wisconsin

Dr. Tom Aufderheide is a Professor of Emergency Medicine and Director of Research Services in the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He is a nationally and internationally recognized researcher in the field of emergency cardiac care with over 100 original research papers published in the peer-reviewed literature (including the New England Journal of Medicine), 37 textbooks related to emergency cardiac care, and 22 book chapters. The focus of much of Dr. Aufderheide’s research has been rapid identification and intervention in the out-of-hospital setting for patients with myocardial ischemia and cardiac arrest, which has been funded by the National Institutes of Health. He has served as Basic Life Support Science Editor as an author and editor of most CPR, AED, and First Aid courses for the National American Heart Association the past 15 years.

Along with these significant accomplishments in research and education, Dr. Aufderheide has achieved many additional scholarly accomplishments that include: member of the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute’s National Heart Attack Alert Program Working Group on Methods/Technologies for Early Identification of Acute Cardiac Ischemia/Acute Myocardial Infarction in the Emergency Department; member of the NIH Small Business Innovation Research Grant Review Committee; International Liaison Committee on Resuscitation, developing international CPR guidelines; and member of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Steering Implementation Committee for the “EMS Agenda for the Future”. Tommy Thompson recognized Dr. Aufderheide for his work in writing and supporting Automated External Defibrillation (AED) legislation in the state of Wisconsin. He has also served as a consultant to the Assistant Surgeon General of the United States for implementation of public access defibrillation in federal buildings.

Dr. Aufderheide is currently Principal Investigator of a number of NIH-funded clinical trials and directs the resuscitation Research Center in the department of Emergency Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

Conflict of Interest

Grants: Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (NHLBI), Immediate Trial (NHLBI), ResQTrial (NHLBI), Neurological Emergency Treatment Trials (NETT) Network
(NINDS)
Paid Consultant: Medtronic, JoLife, Take Heart America
Paid Speaker: EMS Today
Volunteer: National American Heart Association
Volunteer President: Citizen CPR Foundation

President, Take Heart America
Managing Director, Resurgent Biomedical Consulting

Robert A. Niskanen is the Managing Director of Resurgent Biomedical Consulting, LLC, in Seattle. He works with several companies on induced hypothermia, mechanical CPR devices, and airway control as methods to improve resuscitation. In addition, he is the President of Take Heart America, a demonstration project aimed to improve survival from sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) in three U.S. cities.

Previously, he served as a Senior Principal Scientist at Medtronic Emergency Response Systems (ERS) in Redmond, Washington. He was part of the research efforts at Physio-Control Corporation/ Medtronic ERS, for more than 25 years, serving previously as the Director of Research and then VP of Clinical Research. He graduated from the University of Washington with a MSEE in 1976.

Bob has been active in biomedical engineering for more than 30 years. His primary professional interests center on resuscitation, emergency medicine and cardiovascular disease. He has been involved in both technical and clinical research in CPR, defibrillation, ventilation, acute myocardial infarction triage and medical data management. He delights in working with engineers, scientists, physicians, researchers, business professionals and others to solve problems in emergency medicine.

He is active with a number of professional organizations, including the National Association of EMS Physicians, the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, the American College of Emergency Physicians, the American Heart Association, European Resuscitation Council, and Citizen CPR Foundation. He was active with the National Center for Early Defibrillation during its existence at the University of Pittsburgh.

Bob is convinced that dramatic improvements can and will be made in the survival rate of sudden cardiac arrest through collaboration. He believes an increased emphasis should be place on the role and influence of SCA survivors in fighting this national medical tragedy.

Conflict of Interest

Compensated

Medivance Inc
Jolife AB
Advanced Circulatory
Atrus Inc
CPR Medical Devices
AMR
Take Heart America
Sudden Cardiac Arrest Survival Initiative

Non-compensated

Sudden Cardiac Arrest Foundation
Society of Academic Emergency Medicine
American Heart Association
National Association of EMS Physicians
European Resuscitation Council

Medical Director, Allina Medical Transportation
Anoka County, MN

Charles Lick, MD, has been an emergency physician or 20 years in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area.

He has held many leadership and medical director roles in his career and is currently medical director of Buffalo Hospital Emergency department and of Allina Medical Transportation.

He started Allina’s Heart Safe Communities program in 2001. This program has placed > 1200 automated external defibrillators throughout central Minnesota that have saved countless lives. Dr. Lick has been focusing on improvements in cardiac arrest resuscitation for many years and has implemented numerous different treatment strategies to improve survival of cardiac arrest.

Volunteer for the American Heart Association

The Del Valle Independent School District recently expanded its efforts to provide staff, students and community members with life saving CPR skills.  Thanks to a HeartRescue grant from the Medtronic Foundation and a partnership with the Take Heart Austin sudden cardiac arrest survival initiative, Del Valle has launched several programs aimed at teaching CPR skills throughout the school district and community.  Under the direction of Molly Garcia, RN, BSN and Mary Beth Denton, LVN (Del Valle Health Services), CPR training is occuring not only in the classroom but also at school district events.

At a recent High School football game, Mary Beth Denton and Kathleen Harris (AHA TC Faculty) set up a booth and provided Hands Only CPR instruction to students, families and others attending the game (Photo, Right, Mary Beth and Kathleen).  Those who demonstrated an understanding of the chest compression only CPR techniques were then eligible to enter a drawing for a free American Heart Association Family & Friends CPR Anytime kit.  Eric Constancio, a Del Valle Middle School student was the lucky winner (Photo below, Eric and his family).  The interest in CPR training is not new to Eric’s family.  His mother, a Del Valle ISD employee, completed an AHA Heartsaver AED training course through the school district. 

Thanks to Del Valle ISD and families like Eric’s, the Del Valle Community is becoming better prepared to help save the lives of sudden cardiac arrest victims.  Take Heart Austin appauds the work of Del Valle ISD and hopes to expand this program to other schools in the Austin area.

Medical Director, City of Austin/Travis County EMS

Edward M. Racht, M.D. is the Medical Director for the City of Austin / Travis County Emergency Medical Services System, a diverse group of Providers and Organizations including Austin - Travis County Emergency Medical Services, the Austin Fire Department, Austin - Travis County 911 Emergency Communications, multiple Public Safety Agencies, fifteen first responder fire departments and EMS agencies and a Corporate Response Group made up of twenty-two regional corporate response teams.

Dr. Racht has been involved in Emergency Medical Services for over twenty years. He received his Medical degree from Emory University in Atlanta and completed his residency at the Medical College of Virginia. Before relocating to Texas, he was an Assistant Professor and Associate Chief of the Medicine Section of Emergency Medical Services at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. He was Medical Director for multiple career and volunteer EMS agencies, Fire Departments and the Richmond Police Department SWAT team. He was appointed by two Governors of Virginia to three successive terms on the State EMS Advisory Board.

Dr. Racht is a Clinical Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School. Appointed by then-Governor George Bush, Racht has served as the Chairperson of the Governor’s EMS & Trauma Advisory Council for the State of Texas since it’s inception in 1999. He has also been extensively involved with the American Heart Association at the local, affiliate and national level. He has been active in International EMS, serving as a consultant to the World Bank and as the American founder of the Vladivostok and Moscow, Russia EMS Training Centers.

Dr. Racht serves as the Medical Advisor for the NHTSA Educational Standards Project, the coordinator of the Take Heart Austin Cardiac Arrest Initiative and serves on multiple national and local committees and advisory boards. The City of Austin / Travis County EMS System was recently cited in the Institute of Medicine’s report on Emergency Medical Services as an example of effective regional collaboration, a philosophy near and dear to Racht’s practice of medicine.

In 1999, Dr. Racht was named EMS Medical Director of the year for the State of Texas. In 2000, he was named Volunteer of the Year for the Capital Area Division of the American Heart Association, and in 2004 he received the American Heart Association’s Paul Ledbetter MD Physician Volunteer of the Year Award. He was also featured in a cover article in JEMS magazine on a “New Breed of Medical Directors” in July 1997.

Dr. Racht is married to Cheryl, a wonderful mom and an accomplished nurse and they have three very high-maintenance, absolutely amazing children - Twins Brandon & Taylor and their big brother Harrison.

Associate Professor, Department of Emergency Medicine
The Ohio State University
Columbus, Ohio, USA

Michael R. Sayre, MD is a native of Cincinnati, Ohio. He attended Xavier University and received his Doctor of Medicine from University of Cincinnati in 1984. Dr. Sayre completed a residency in Emergency Medicine at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh, PA and remained on the attending staff there until 1990 when he returned to Cincinnati.

While on the faculty of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Sayre focused on Emergency Medical Services and sudden cardiac arrest resuscitation. In 2003, Dr. Sayre moved to The Ohio State University. He has remained active with cardiac arrest research and served as the Principal Investigator for the Ohio site in the ASPIRE clinical trial of the AutoPulse CPR assist device. He was the Chair of the AHA Basic Life Support Subcommittee during the 2005 ECC Guidelines process. He is currently the Vice-chairman of the AHA Emergency Cardiovascular Care Committee and the Columbus site leader for Take Heart America, the Cardiac Arrest Survival Initiative.

Staff Cardiologist, St. Cloud Hospital
Professor of Internal & Emergency Medicine, University of Minnesota
Chief Medical Officer, Advanced Circulatory Systems, Inc.

Keith Geoffrey Lurie received his undergraduate education in architecture and molecular biophysics and biochemistry from Yale University and a medical degree from Stanford University in 1982. Following a clinical pharmacology fellowship at Stanford (1982-1983), a residency in internal medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (1983-1985), a fellowship in biochemistry and biophysics at the University of Pennsylvania (1985-1987), Dr. Lurie completed his cardiology and electrophysiology training at the University of California in San Francisco. He served on the faculty there as an assistant professor until moving to Minnesota in 1991. Since that time he has served as a faculty member at the University of Minnesota.

Dr. Lurie is currently a Professor of Internal Medicine and Emergency Medicine at the University of Minnesota and he practices cardiac electrophysiology in St. Cloud two days/week. Dr. Lurie has received multiple National Institute of Health and Defense Department grant awards and is an inventor of multiple different technologies. He founded Advanced Circulatory Systems in 1997 and remains Chairman of the Board and Chief Operating Officer. Dr. Lurie served on the American Heart Association Basic Life Support subcommittee from 1998-2007. He co-founded Take Heart America in 2005.

Conflict of Interest
Founder of Advanced Circulatory Systems; a Resuscitation Technology company. Advanced Circulatory Systems manufactures and sells the impedance threshold device (ITD: ResQPOD) and other technologies.