Why I Serve...
"As an NACCD member I look forward to contributing to initiatives to improve immediate and long-term PHE/disaster related readiness, medical/psychosocial healthcare and welfare of children/families, as well as sustainable infrastructure and systems to best support real-time data driven communication and actions for preparedness and nimble, effective, efficient societal engagement in response and recovery across all sectors. "
Debra Weiner, MD, PhD is a Pediatric Emergency Medicine Physician at Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and charter faculty and Director of Pediatric Disaster, for the Harvard Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Disaster Fellowship now in its 15th year. As a disaster physician on the National Disaster Medical System (NDMS) Disaster Medical Assistance Team Massachusetts-1, the Pediatric Specialty Team-East, and currently the Trauma Critical Care Team Dr. Weiner has deployed for disaster response national and internationally. Dr. Weiner is also a PhD Human Geneticist with expertise in emergency diagnosis and management of patients with rare disease. Dr. Weiner is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Children and Disasters, and the Society of Pediatric Research (SPR), serving on the SPR Research Advocacy committee for 10 years. She is also a member of the World Association of Disaster Emergency Medicine (WADEM), and co-founder and charter member of the newly created WADEM Pediatric Special Interest Group.
Dr. Weiner’s focuses her disaster/public health emergency (PHE) related work on building capacity for disaster response and research and improving resiliency. She has developed multimodality pediatric disaster preparedness and response courses and workshops, including for austere environments, and has taught nationally and internationally. She was site PI site for the BARDA/FDA funded Discovery-PREP/Resiliency Intelligence Network to develop an international government-academic network of networks to build research infrastructure, including an electronic platform for real-time data collection during disasters/PHEs. Dr. Weiner is currently studying the impact of COVID-19 on emergency department utilization, and is working with the Boston Children’s Hospital Complex Care Service to optimize care of patients with special needs by identifying best practices for telemedicine and for use of family emergency information forms. She has also reported on the impact of COVID-19 on research, lessons learned and implications for pediatric research and the research pipeline.
