Induction Elie NAM – Emergency Medicine

Elie receives prestigious induction into the National Academy of Medicine

Marie-Carmelle Elie, MD, FACEP, FCCM, FAAEM, RDMS, accomplished professor and director of the Department of Emergency Medicine, received the honor of being elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM). Induction into NAM is one of the highest honors for a physician in the United States. This recent achievement is an incredible feat for Elie and the department she leads.

The Academy’s selection process highlights those who have made major contributions to the advancement of health care, medical science, and public health and who have demonstrated a dedication to service. With an undergraduate degree from Columbia University and a medical degree from the State University of New York at Brooklyn including a research distinction, she continues her work in education, research and innovation with more than 100 publications to date. Elie completed his residency in Emergency Medicine at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York, followed by the highly acclaimed Critical Care/Trauma Fellowship at the R. Adam Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland. To add to her many accomplishments, she is triple certified in Emergency Medicine, Critical Care Medicine and Palliative Care Medicine. After stops in New Jersey and Florida, Dr. Elie became the first African American woman to chair an academic emergency department in the country, representing the first researcher at the crossroads of the disciplines of emergency medicine, critical care and palliative care to gain such recognition in North America.

Dr. Elie says she is incredibly touched by her induction into NAM and is grateful to the countless patients who have been part of her journey. Its recognition stems from the establishment of new programs that have an impact on patient care and survival. “My greatest passion has been to improve the survival of patients with serious illnesses in order to improve their dignity and quality of life. Emergency medicine represents both a service and a concept where early decisions made at critical inflection points of acute illness can have a long-term impact on outcomes. Years before CMS baseline measures and state mandates for sepsis protocols, Dr. Elie established hospital-wide and community-wide sepsis programs that served as proof of concept for early identification and streamlined management of sepsis from the patient’s home using the system’s pre-hospital to emergency room and finally to critical care environments to effectively improve outcomes. For example, the expansion of the model of these programs in North Central Florida has leveraged pre-hospital and emergency medical systems improving sepsis outcomes for Floridians within a 100-mile radius. His research in sepsis focuses on strategies to halt the progression to acute respiratory distress syndrome. His work presents the initial studies designed to administer convalescent plasma to treat infectious diseases such as influenza. With the growing recognition of a complex and aging population of patients who died in hospital intensive care units, Dr. Elie established lines of family support and palliative care services in several hospitals, transforming models of care among terminally ill or terminally ill patients, and increasing palliative care enrollment for dying patients in hospitals. She helped develop and teach a palliative care communications series for emergency providers that has been delivered to numerous emergency departments across the United States and is currently engaged as an investigator in 2 most funded palliative care clinical trials in the country. As the former chief medical officer of one of Florida’s largest hospice and hospice organizations, she has partnered with community hospice and home health agencies to provide in-home services that enable rapid return home from emergencies and intensive care in order to improve quality. life of patients in the terminal phase of their chronic disease. During the COVID pandemic, she championed the greatest effort to continue home care for the elderly and dying at the height of the crisis. She continues her work on sepsis and palliative care at UAB.

“I am grateful beyond measure and grateful to everyone who played a role in my nomination,” says Elie. “This is a direct reflection of the support from the entire emergency medicine department and our great institution.”