| Dr. Rick
Bissell is originally from Colorado and California.
After finishing his BA at UC Davis, he trained as an EMT, and then paramedic,
and served in the Davis/Sacramento area. He left EMS to teach in
Germany for a couple of years and study in Mexico, from which he returned
to the US convinced that his future was in combining emergency medicine
and public health issues at the international level. He enrolled
simultaneously at the University of Denver’s Graduate School of International
Studies and the University of Colorado Medical School’s Preventive Medicine/Health
Administration program, where colleagues in each program thought his work
in the other program strange. He completed a Master’s degree in each
program, and his PhD combined the two.
Rick was one of the earliest
researchers to use epidemiologic and health planning methods to examine
the medical and public health response to disasters. His work in
disaster epidemiology, disaster health services planning and evaluation,
and EMS system development has taken him to more than 40 countries, with
special emphasis on Latin America, Europe, and Saudi Arabia. Rick
is an active researcher in various aspects of disaster medical and public
health response, and has numerous peer-reviewed national and international
publications and presentations. He has also used epidemiologic and
health system evaluation skills to examine some timely EMS issues, such
as the potential for paramedics to expand their scope of care.
Rick is the principal investigator
on a 5-year multi-million dollar project supported by the US Public Health
Service to train clinicians and logistics personnel in medical response
to disasters and terrorism. He also sits on advisory boards to the
American Red Cross and the World Health Organization, the German National
Committee on Global Change, and is on the editorial board of Prehospital
and Disaster Medicine.
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