The National Center provides an academic home for disaster health scientists within the federal environment. NCDMPH welcomes diverse and respected visiting scholars in a variety of disciplines such as medicine, public health, adult education and social sciences. Scholars contribute to NCDMPH projects and plans, in addition to bringing their programs of research. Each year, NCDMPH hosts 1-2 Visiting Scholars to collaborate on critical disaster science and education projects.
Current Visiting Scholars include Dr. Rita Burke, Dr. Kobi Peleg, Dr. Tim Davis, Dr. Dan Barnett, and Dr. Jeff Freeman.
Rita Burke, PhD, MPH, is a Visiting Scholar with the National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health (NCDMPH), and currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Research Surgery and Preventive Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California and the Division of Pediatric Surgery at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. Dr. Burke leads all research efforts and provides training in both quantitative and qualitative analysis and evaluation. She is the former co-chair of the Research Committee for the Pediatric Trauma Society, the current co-chair for the Los Angeles Children in Disasters Working Group and co-chair of the Disaster and Emergency Response sub-committee of the American Public Health Association. She is the Associate Editor for the peer-reviewed journal Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness and the co-author of Landesman’s Public Health Management of Disasters. Dr. Burke will lend her considerable expertise in pediatric disaster health to complete an assessment of pediatric disaster health education courses in order to identify redundancies and gaps.
Kobi Peleg, PhD, MPH, is a Visiting Scholar with the National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health (NCDMPH), and currently serves as the Head of the National Center for Trauma and Emergency Medicine Research in the Gertner Institute, a full Professor, the Head (and founder) of the Disaster Medicine Management Department, and the Head of the Executive Master’s Program for Emergency Disaster Management in the School of Public Health, Tel Aviv University. In this capacity, Prof. Peleg leads research and education activities in various fields of trauma, with special interest in mass casualty events, disasters and terror-related injury, and emergency medical services (EMS). Dr. Peleg is the foremost global expert in mass-casualty events, disasters, and terror-related injuries and international EMS.
Tim Davis, MD, MPH (EIS’97) is a Visiting Scholar in the National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health (NCDMPH). Dr. Davis is a retired USPHS Captain (1997-2018), former Branch Chief (CMO) of Operational Medicine, National Disaster Medical System (HHS/ASPR/OEM), an Emory Emergency Medicine Asst. Professor Emeritus (1989-2015), Adjunct Assistant Professor of Surgery (Primary), Military Emergency Medicine (Secondary) at the Uniformed Services University (2005-present), and USAF (1976-1997) LTC Senior Flight Surgeon. His current areas of study include disaster responder safety, military to civilian knowledge transfer, blast injury patterns, surge capacity, information gaps related to large explosions and make-shift bombs as they affect civilian non-combatants and diverse communities. Dr. Davis will lend his considerable expertise on explosives and other kinetic energy incidents causing mass casualties and fatalities, disaster healthcare responder safety and health, and additional support for Stop the Bleed and other ongoing disaster projects.
Daniel Barnett, MD, MPH is a Senior Visiting Scholar in the National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health (NCDMPH). Dr. Barnett currently serves as an Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Health & Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH), where he has a joint appointment in the Department of Health Policy and Management and is on the Core Faculty of the Office of Public Health Practice & Training. His research interests include evidence-based approaches to organizational enhancement of public health emergency preparedness. Dr. Barnett previously worked at Baltimore City Health Department's Office of Public Health Preparedness and Response, where he conducted disaster preparedness training activities for the department’s workers. Dr. Barnett will lend his considerable expertise to conduct an assessment of After Action Reports from Hurricane Harvey and develop a training for volunteers in disasters based upon prior data.
Jeff Freeman, MPH, PhD is a Visiting Scholar in the National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health (NCDMPH). Dr. Freeman currently serves as the Senior Scientist for Disaster Health in the National Health Mission Area of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL), which is the nation’s largest and longest serving University Affiliated Research Center (UARC). Dr. Freeman’s primary responsibilities include the development of a Disaster Health Initiative for JHU/APL in support of the United States Government (USG). The mission of his initiative is to enhance USG engagement in disasters by providing health enabling solutions and capabilities aimed at achieving a rapid, coordinated, and effective response. In addition to the Applied Physics Lab, Dr. Freeman is faculty in the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health, and was previously selected as an Emerging Leader in Biosecurity Fellow by the Center for Health Security. Dr. Freeman will lend his considerable expertise to develop research and educational projects/products with NCDMPH on mutually beneficial topics and areas of interest including disaster response, disaster medicine, public health preparedness and modeling.
