Kirsch, Thomas, M.D., M.P.H.

Associate Professor       Deputy Director, Office of Critical Event      Preparedness and Response (CEPAR)      Co-Director, Center for Refugee      and Disaster Response (CRDR)

Education
University of Nebraska Medical Center (M.D., 1984)
Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health (M.P.H., 1986)

Residency
The Johns Hopkins Preventive Medicine Residency (1985-1997)
George Washington University, EM (1987-1990)

Kirsch is currently the Co-Director of the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, an Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, and the Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response. He is a board-certified emergency physician and expert in disaster planning and response, wilderness medicine and health care management. 

Dr. Kirsch has served as the National Physician Advisor for the American Red Cross Disaster Health Services, and has consulted on disaster-related issues for the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Pan American Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance of the United States Agency for International Development.  He has real-life disaster experience from local incidents to hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the NYC response to the 9-11 terrorist attacks, the earthquakes in Haiti, Chile and New Zealand and the 2010 floods in Pakistan.  Most recently he served as a consultant to the Departments of State and Defense to assess the entire US government’s response to the Haitian earthquake.

Dr. Kirsch has authored 50 scientific articles, dozens of abstracts, and 14 textbook chapters.  He also authored the disaster medical textbook, Emergent Field Medicine (VanRooyen-Kirsch).  He has presented at numerous national and international conferences.  He serves on the Editorial Board for the American Medical Association’s journal, Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness. He is a reviewer for the American Journal of Public Health, Annals of Emergency Medicine, Emergency Medicine Reports, and the Annals of Emergency Medicine. He was the editor of the international section of the Annals of Emergency Medicine from 1995-2000.

His research activities focus on: 
1. Developing methods to measure the impact and quality of disaster response;
2. Working with the engineering community to assessing the impact on, and resiliency of healthcare systems in disaster (particularly earthquakes);
3. Creating physiologic triage tools to improve hospital resource utilization in a disaster response. 

He currently teaches the masters-level courses Introduction to Humanitarian Emergencies and Public Health Methods in Disasters at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and Wilderness Medicine at the School of Medicine and directs a Disaster Fellowship. 
 

Dr. Kirsch has extensive disaster, international health and health care management experience.  He is the co-Director of the Center for Refugee and Disaster Response (CRDR) in the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, an Assistant Professor and the Director of Operations for the Department of Emergency Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Deputy Director of the Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response (CEPAR). 

For the past 15 years he has served as the National Physician Advisor for the American Red Cross Disaster Health Services, and has consulted on disaster-related issues for the World Health Organization, Unicef, the Centers for Disease Control and the United States Agency for International Development (Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance).  He also has real-life disaster management experience from local incidents to the responses to the 9-11 terrorist attacks and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Dr. Kirsch is an experienced educator and has lectured nationally and internationally on a variety of health issues.  He teaches the course, “Public Health Issues in Disasters” at the Bloomberg School of Public Health and is the Director of the Johns Hopkins Wilderness Medicine Course.  He is an author of 24 scientific articles, dozens of abstract and four textbook chapters.  He is also the second editor of an international health textbook (Emergent Field Medicine) and an editor and reviewer for the leading emergency medicine journal, the Annals of Emergency Medicine.  He served as the editor of the international section of the Annals of Emergency Medicine from 1995-2000.

View Dr. Kirsch's Current Research Publications >