Dara Kass

Dara Kass is an emergency medicine physician and Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center. She is also an advocate for advancing the careers of women in medicine. While treating patients during the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, Kass became infected. Since then, she has become a prominent voice advocating for access to personal protective equipment and more effective measures to combat the spread of the disease.

Dara Kass
Alma materUniversity of Maryland, College Park, BS, 1998
SUNY Downstate Medical Center, MD, 2003
Known forCOVID-19 response
Children3
Scientific career
FieldsEmergency medicine
InstitutionsColumbia University
New York-Presbyterian Hospital

Education and early career

Kass was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Her mother was an emergency medicine nurse at Brookdale Hospital in Brooklyn and inspired Kass's career in medicine.[1] She then attended the University of Maryland, College Park, where she received her Bachelor of Science degree in neurobiology and physiology in 1998.[2] She then returned to Brooklyn to study medicine at SUNY Downstate Medical School, where she received her Doctor of Medicine degree in 2003. From 2003 to 2007, she performed her residency training in emergency medicine at SUNY Downstate Kings County Hospital.[1]

Medical career

Kass began her post-residency medical career as an attending physician at Staten Island University Hospital, where she remained for five years between 2007 and 2013 before moving to NYU Langone Medical Center. There, she ran the medical school programs in the emergency department, serving as the Director of Undergraduate Medical Education.[1] In 2017, she became the Director of Equity and Inclusion and Associate Professor at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and in July 2018, she became and Assistant Attending Physician at New York Presbyterian Medical Center.

COVID-19 work

While treating patients in New York City, Kass became infected with the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2).[3] When she first began treating coronavirus patients, she sent her children to live with her parents in New Jersey, while dividing up her home with her husband to prevent infecting her family.[4] While she was in quarantine recovering from the disease, she continued to advocate for the growing urgency of the situation, noting emergency rooms overwhelmed with patients, shortages of ventilators and personal protective equipment for doctors, and the risks posed to healthcare workers inundated with COVID-19 cases.[5] She has also discussed the risk the pandemic poses to healthcare workers' mental health as they will begin making decisions about whom to treat and whom to not treat in light of hospital supply shortages.[3][6] As she began to recover, Kass began virtually consulting with patients using telemedicine technologies.[7] During the COVID pandemic, she has appeared regularly as a medical expert on national cable news. [8]

Kass has been critical of the Trump administration's response to the pandemic, citing inadequate attention paid to the forecasters' projections when they began warning of an emerging crisis in January and a continuing lack of federal oversight and coordination in response to the pandemic.[9]

Advocacy

Kass is an advocate for the advancement of women in medicine. She is a founding member of Time's Up Healthcare, working to root out sexual and gender harassment in medicine.[10][11] She is also the founder and CEO of FemInEM, a blog and conference with a mission of promoting gender equity in emergency medicine since its inception in 2015.[12][13] She has also written about the harassment that women in medicine experience even from their patients in the wake of reports that Les Moonves sexually harassed his physician.[14] She also currently serves as the Director of Equity and Inclusion Initiatives at Columbia University Medical Center.

Leadership

In addition to her work on promoting gender equity in medicine, Kass serves on the board of the nonprofit ORGANIZE, working to reform the organ donation system.[15] She is also a board member of AFFIRM Research, an organization advocating for a public health approach to solving the epidemic of gun violence.[16] She previously served on the Board of Directors for the Academy of Women in Academic Emergency Medicine between 2012 and 2015.

Awards and honors

Personal life

Kass is a mother of three children. Her youngest son, Sammy, was diagnosed with a rare condition known as alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, which results in severely impaired liver function.[20] While some infants outgrow the condition, her son did not. As a result, she chose to act as a living donor, donating a part of her liver to her son and recounted the experience in The New York Times.[21] She has since advocated for revamping federal rules around U.S.'s organ donation system to increase access to organ donations.[22]

References
  1. Schostak, Danielle (2019-01-21). "Dear Doctor: Dara Kass". Medium. Retrieved 2020-04-01.
  2. "Build the Wave". build-the-wave. Retrieved 2020-04-01.
  3. Harris, Mary (2020-03-26). "She Was Treating the Infected. Now She Has the Coronavirus". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 2020-04-01.
  4. "Coronavirus Pandemic Takes A Toll On ER Doctors' Health And Families". NPR.org. Retrieved 2020-04-01.
  5. Glenza, Jessica; Rao, Ankita; Villarreal, Alexandra (2020-03-27). "'It's what was happening in Italy': the hospital at the center of New York's Covid-19 crisis". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-04-01.
  6. Baylon, Claire Molloy, Jacqueline. "'We're going to war and without any ammunition': 6 doctors reveal what it's like to treat coronavirus patients as hospitals scramble for supplies". Business Insider. Retrieved 2020-04-01.
  7. Hendrickson, V. L. "NYC doctor who contracted the coronavirus says 'the volume of patients is just staggering'". MarketWatch. Retrieved 2020-04-02.
  8. "NYC ER doctor discusses bout with virus and returning to work". MSNBC.com. Retrieved 2020-06-02.
  9. Schama, Chloe. ""They Ignored the Warning Signs": A New York City ER Doctor Explains What She's Up Against". Vogue. Retrieved 2020-04-01.
  10. Mohan, Pavithra (2019-02-28). "The #TimesUp movement is coming to healthcare". Fast Company. Retrieved 2020-04-01.
  11. Choo, Esther K.; van Dis, Jane; Kass, Dara (2018-10-25). "Time's Up for Medicine? Only Time Will Tell" (PDF). New England Journal of Medicine. 379 (17): 1592–1593. doi:10.1056/NEJMp1809351. ISSN 0028-4793. PMID 30207825.
  12. Huber, Author Jennifer (2017-07-12). "FemInEm blog facilititates conversations about women in emergency medicine". Scope. Retrieved 2020-04-01.
  13. Kass, Dara; Choo, Esther K. (2016-10-01). "When will we have enough women speakers in emergency medicine?" (PDF). Emergency Medicine Journal. 33 (10): 680. doi:10.1136/emermed-2016-206088. ISSN 1472-0205. PMID 27534976. S2CID 27391336.
  14. Dis, Dara Kass, Jane van (2018-09-12). "Yes, Les Moonves Harassed His Doctor. For Women in Medicine, This Is an Outrage, but Not a Surprise". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 2020-04-01.
  15. "ORGANIZE". Retrieved 2020-04-02.
  16. Kass, Megan L. Ranney, Heather Sher and Dara. "Medical professionals to NRA: Guns are our lane. Help us reduce deaths or move over". USA TODAY. Retrieved 2020-04-02.
  17. "EMRA 45 Under 45". www.emra.org. Retrieved 2020-04-03.
  18. Roseen, Stacey (2019-05-15). "Society for Academic Emergency Medicine Announces 2019 Award Winners" (PDF) (Press release). Society for Academic Emergency Medicine. Retrieved 2020-04-01.
  19. "Awards". www.nyacep.org. Retrieved 2020-04-02.
  20. "This Doctor and Mom Donated Part of Her Liver to Her Son in Rare Living Transplant". PEOPLE.com. Retrieved 2020-04-02.
  21. Kass, Dara; M.D (2016-05-13). "Donating an Organ to My Son". Well. Retrieved 2020-04-02.
  22. Kass, Dara (2020-01-09). "America's deadly failure on organ donations". New York Post. Retrieved 2020-04-02.
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