People

Dr. Ornato was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He graduated from Boston University Medical School magna cum laude. He completed his training in Internal Medicine at New York City’s Mount Sinai Hospital and in Cardiology at New York Hospital-Cornell University Medical Center. He is triple board certified (Internal Medicine, Cardiology, Emergency Medicine). Dr. Ornato is an active researcher focused on acute cardiovascular/prehospital care and cardiopulmonary resuscitation. Dr. Ornato served as the American Editor of Resuscitation for 23 years and is currently on its Editorial Board. He is also an Editorial Board member for the American Journal of Emergency Medicine and the Journal of Emergency Medical Services. Dr. Ornato is past Chairman of the American Heart Association’s (AHA) National Emergency Cardiovascular Care Committee and its Advanced Cardiac Life Support Subcommittee and served as the AHA’s national representative to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute’s National Heart Attack Alert Program’s Coordinating Committee and Chairman of its Science Base Subcommittee. Dr. Ornato served as a Special Consultant to the Circulatory System Devices Panel of the Food and Drug Administration. He chaired the National Steering Committee on the NIH/AHA/Industry Public Access Defibrillation Trial and was the Principal Investigator on a Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Bioterrorism Training grant.

Dr. Ornato served as Cardiac Co-Chairman of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (ROC) and as Principal Investigator for VCU on the NIH-sponsored Neurological Emergency Treatment Trials (NETT) Network. He is a member of the prestigious National Academy of Medicine (formerly the Institute of Medicine). Among his 29 local, regional, and national awards, he was particularly honored to receive the 2016 American Heart Association’s National Clinical Research Prize, which is bestowed upon only one cardiovascular clinical researcher in the United States annually. Dr. Ornato is currently VCU site co-PI for the NIH ICECAP therapeutic hypothermia duration post-cardiac arrest trial. From 2015-17 he served as PI for an NIH/National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) STTR project developing the infrastructure needed to deliver intranasal naloxone by drone to bystanders at the scene of a life-threatening opioid overdose while EMS units race to the scene. He is currently Co-PI in collaboration with Duke University of an American Heart Association, 4-year HERN project implementing programs to deliver automated external defibrillators (AEDs) to bystanders by drone to treat out-of-hospital cardiac arrest victims in suburban and rural communities.

Dr. Ornato is an instrument-rated pilot who flies a high-performance propjet. He is also a commercial drone pilot.

Dr. Monique Starks is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology at the Duke University School of Medicine. Although she wanted to be a doctor from the time she was very young, it wasn’t until her own father had a heart attack in his 30’s that she knew she wanted to be a heart specialist. As a general cardiologist at Duke, she cares for patients with a wide range of heart issues including palpitations, abnormalities, hypertension and heart attacks.She is also trained as a health services researcher and resuscitation scientist. Her research is focused on observational research and the design and testing of novel interventions to improve both in-hospital cardiac arrest (IHCA) and out of hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). Her research has helped to highlight geographical and racial disparities in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training, use of bystander CPR and defibrillation, and outcomes of OHCA.

Todd Korthuis, MD, MPH, is Professor of Medicine and Head of Addiction Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University. His research focuses on integration of addiction prevention and treatment interventions in diverse settings. He serves as Co-Principal Investigator for PEER-Heart study that tests rural community-based peer screening and connection to tele-cardiology for people who use methamphetamine. He serves as Principal Investigator for the Oregon HOPE and Peer-CM studies that test peer outreach and linkage to care interventions for people who use drugs in rural communities, and as Co-Principal Investigator of the Western States Node of the National Drug Abuse Treatment Clinical Trials Network (CTN) that conducts multi-site trials of emerging treatments for methamphetamine, cocaine, and opioid use disorders. Honors include the 2008 Lawrence S. Linn Award for research that improves the lives of people living with HIV and Fulbright Senior Scholar awards to Vietnam (2012) and Spain (2022).

Hi! My name is McCall Miller. I am based in Louisville, KY and graduated with a BA from Centre College in May 2023. I am a second-year fellow on the INSTEP project and have learned a great deal over the past year. I have enjoyed getting to know people all around the country (and world!), visiting Whiteriver, AZ, and learning about community-based participatory research. I look forward to all that is to come in my second year of fellowship!

Sarah de Loizaga is a faculty member in the Heart Institute at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital within the UC Department of Pediatrics. She practices general, outpatient cardiology through the outreach clinics in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky.  Her research seeks to understand and address health disparities and advance equitable access to care and outcomes for children with congenital and acquired heart disease in the United States and around the world.

Dr. de Loizaga attended medical school at University of Connecticut and completed her Pediatric Residency and Pediatric Cardiology Fellowship training at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. She also completed a 2-year American Heart Association Research Fellowship through the AHA funded research Center, “Active Case Detection and Decentralized Dynamic Registry to Improve the Uptake of Rheumatic Heart Disease Secondary Prevention.”