CONFERENCE SPEAKERS & FACULTY

Remle Crowe, PhD, NREMT is an expert in EMS research and quality improvement. Prior to earning her PhD in public health from The Ohio State University, her EMS career began as a volunteer EMT and instructor with the Red Cross in Mexico City, where she also worked at Ford Motor Company as a Powertrain Quality engineer certified as a Black Belt in Six Sigma. Now, Dr. Crowe blends her background in research and improvement science to improve community health and safety through the power of data as Director of Research at ESO in Austin, Texas.

Darick Day currently serves as a Battalion Chief and EMS Training Officer for the Mehlville Fire Protection District. With 15 years of experience as a paramedic in Missouri, Darick has dedicated his career to serving the greater St. Louis region. He is certified in both ground and flight critical care and has provided critical care education to paramedics and RNs for several years. An accomplished speaker and educator, Darick has extensive experience at all levels of EMS education, and is dedicated to improving prehospital emergency medicine.  

Brian Froelke, MD is an Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He attended the University of Cincinnati Medical School and continued his training at Barnes Jewish Hospital where he served as Chief Resident. He assisted with the construction of an EMS Fellowship Program in which he was the inaugural fellow in Emergency Medical Services. He is the EMS medical director for Christian Hospital EMS in Saint Louis as well as a number of local emergency response agencies. He is President of the Interstate Disaster Medical Collaborative and the EMS Medical Director for East Central Region.

Scott Gilmore, MD is the Medical Director of St. Louis Fire Department, Affton Fire Protection District and Lemay Fire Protection District. He started his career in EMS over 20 years ago as an EMT-A working in a fire-based system. He continued his training and became an EMT-I, EMT-P and EMS Educator. Prior to becoming the Medical Director of the St. Louis Fire Department, he served as the Assistant Medical Director. In addition to being the Medical Director, he works as an attending physician in the Emergency Department at Mercy Hospital South in St. Louis, Missouri and serves on the Board of the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians.

Lekshmi Kumar, MD is a board-certified Emergency Medicine physician and has been working clinically within the Emory and Grady system for 14 years. Following residency in Rochester MN, she completed her EMS fellowship in Emory, Atlanta . She has been active in the EMS community and currently serves as the medical director for Grady EMS, a large county hospital-based that serves the City of Atlanta. Grady EMS is a tiered system and a transport service with an annual call volume of approximately 160,000 within the city. She is passionate about pre-hospital education and dedicated to ensuring the highest standards of evidenced based pre-hospital care.

Mark D. Levine, MD is a Professor of Emergency Medicine and Emergency Medicine Course Director at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. He started his career as an Emergency Medical Technician—Basic. He graduated from New York University School of Medicine and completed his Emergency Medicine residency at the MetroHealth Medical Center/Cleveland Clinic program in Cleveland, Ohio, where he served as a Flight Physician for Metro Life Flight. He is board certified in Emergency Medicine and Emergency Medical Services. He was the former Medical Director of the St. Louis Fire Department, and now serves as the Assistant Medical Director. He has lectured locally, nationally, and internationally on Emergency Medicine and Pre-hospital Medicine, has edited a textbook on Emergency Medicine, and is a reviewer for EMS World Magazine.

Tom Lewis, MD is the Mercy EMS Medical Director. Dr. Tom Lewis is responsible for comprehensive medical oversight of all clinical care provided in the Mercy EMS system throughout Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma. The ground EMS system is currently comprised of 29 stations in 14 counties. Dr. Lewis is board certified in both Emergency Medicine and Emergency Medical Services. He graduated from the University of Kansas School of Medicine in 2001, attended specialty training at the Michigan State / SCHI Emergency Residency Program with a special interest in prehospital care. He worked with ground and air ambulance services and developed a comprehensive regional tactical EMS system in Saginaw, Michigan. He continues to work with various governor advisory boards and regional EMS committees. Dr. Lewis has worked at the Mercy Emergency Level I Trauma Center in Springfield, Missouri since 2004 and helped develop an area tactical EMS program while staying involved in EMS education and training. Dr. Lewis is driven by the compassionate delivery of quality prehospital care and is actively involved in education and all aspects of clinical practice.

Phil Moy, MD is an Emergency Physician at Mercy Health Systems in St Louis MO for over 15 years. He finished his EMS fellowship at the University of North Carolina and has been an EMS physician for over 12 years. In that time, he has been active in educating paramedics through podcasts like the Prehospital Emergency Care Podcast and the AMPED podcast, been an active EMS medical director for helicopter and ground services, involved in local government Time Critical Diagnosis committees, and a board member of the National Association of EMS Physicians.

Brent Myers, MD began his EMS career during high school as an emergency department technician in his hometown of Wilkesboro, NC. The department charge nurse, Geraldine, had a huge influence on Brent’s career, reminding him of the rewards that come from helping others: “If you stick with this for a month, you will want to work in this field the rest of your life.” Brent went on to complete an EMT course and volunteered with Orange County Rescue Squad – the 9-1-1 EMS provider in Hillsborough, NC – while completing his undergraduate degree in English at UNC-Chapel Hill. After medical school at Wake Forest and an Emergency Medicine Residency at Carolinas Medical Center, he had the honor to serve as the first EMS Fellow at UNC, under the great mentorship of Jane Brice. For the next 12 years, Brent had the privilege to lead the Wake County EMS system in clinical and administrative roles. He then served as Chief Medical Officer for Evolution Health and Associate Chief Medical Officer for American Medical Response (AMR). He currently serves as the Chief Medical Officer for ESO, working to innovate and integrate dispatch, fire, EMS, and hospital data in order to improve community health and safety. Brent is the past President of the National Association of EMS Physicians (NAEMSP) and the North Carolina College of Emergency Physicians. He has authored more than 30 peer-reviewed publications, serves as co-editor of the NAEMSP textbook, advocated at the national level for EMS issues (including the Protecting Patient Access to Emergency Medications Act), presented globally from Moscow to Dubai to Seoul, and continues to serve as an Associate Medical Director for the Wake County EMS System. 

Bryan Nelson, MBA, CPHQ, NRP has been involved in EMS since 1989 and a certified paramedic since 1992. He has a diverse background in EMS including 911-ground ambulance, firefighter/paramedic, and several years as a full-time, critical-care flight paramedic before transitioning to roles in EMS administration and oversight of one of the busiest STEMI programs in the nation. Bryan currently serves as the Clinical Quality Specialist for Cardiothoracic Surgery, Vascular Surgery, and Mechanical Circulatory Support for Lehigh Valley Health Network in northeast Pennsylvania. He has extensive experience leveraging data for quality, process, and systems improvement, and collaborating with multidisciplinary teams to enhance local and regional systems of care. He serves on various local, regional, and national EMS advocacy and leadership committees and served on the FEMA/HHS ASPR COVID-19 Healthcare Resiliency Task Force as a member of the Prehospital Workgroup during the pandemic. Bryan continues to work part-time as a paramedic for two municipal 911 EMS agencies.

Brian Openlander, DO is board certified in Emergency Medicine through ABEM and currently works as an Emergency Physician and the Medical Director for Mobile Integrated Healthcare-EMS for the Mercy system. He began his career as an EMT, RN, and Paramedic/FF, working in 911, CCT, and ICU settings in Missouri, Colorado, and Alabama. He attended medical school at VCOM in Auburn, AL and residency at University of Missouri where he was a Chief Resident. His passion for all things involving prehospital-care is what drove him to pursue Emergency Medicine and continues to dominate his ongoing professional interests, but interests also include First Responder health, wellness, and fitness. 

Paul Pepe, MD, Medical Director for Public Safety/EMS, Dallas County (TX), leads the Metropolitan EMS Medical Directors (aka, “Eagles”) Global Alliance. Primary-founder/first nationally-elected president of NAEMSP, he was also the first full-time EMS Medical Director (Houston;1982-1996), responding on the streets 24/7, and soon forging the future EMS subspecialty while also executing vanguard scientific investigations in prehospital care. With more than five hundred scientific publications to date, many are already considered landmark papers (“auto-PEEP”, "permissive-hypotension" in post-traumatic hemorrhage, “Chain-of-Survival”, "limited-ventilation CPR", Chicago-airport "public AED use", and "Neuroprotective/heads-up CPR" -- among others). Recognized for heroism and street-savvy leadership during major 9-1-1 responses over the years, including a formal citation in the U.S. Congressional Record, he continues to receive prestigious honors such as 2020 NAEMT Medical Director of the Year Award and (unprecedented) back-to-back Star Research Achievement Awards (2020,2021,2022,2023) across numerous subjects from the Society of Critical Care Medicine as well as other top research recognitions (in 2022 alone) from the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) and the EMS 2022 International Conference. While ACEP had already named him the "most productive emergency medical services physician of our generation” in 2005, most would say that he maintains that status today.  

Justin Rapoff, DO is the Medical Director for St. Louis Elite Medical Systems. Prior to this he was the Regional EMS Medical Director for SSM St. Louis for 9 years where he oversaw forty three municipalities, one hundred fourteen ambulances, and over one thousand eight hundred EMT-P/B’s in the greater St. Louis Region. Prior to working in St. Louis, he completed a residency in Emergency Medicine and a fellowship in Tactical Medicine in Chicago, working with the Cook County Sherriff’s Hostage Barricade Terrorism S.W.A.T. team. He has his own YouTube channel devoted to EMS training shorts among some very innovative training he has brought to the St. Louis region including the EMS intubation Challenge and EMS Warrior Challenge. Growing up in central Illinois, undergraduate studies in Biology at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, and Medical School at Kansas City University, along with family and friends, have kept him in the Midwest for most of his life.

Judson Smith, MHA, NRP brings more than 25 years of experience in fire and EMS to his current role, Training Officer with the City of St. Louis Fire Department. He holds a master’s degree in Healthcare Administration, numerous EMS teaching credentials and founded one of the first virtual online EMS training programs in the United States. Judson also holds numerous specialty paramedic and firefighter certifications. He has a background in both flight medicine and fire-based EMS. Judson also serves as an officer in an Air Force Reserves aeromedical evacuation squadron.

Rachel Stemerman, PhD, MPH is a leading expert in the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and emergency medical services (EMS). With a Ph.D. in Health Informatics from UNC Chapel Hill, she has focused her career on enhancing pre-hospital care through innovative AI solutions. Currently, Dr. Stemerman is a Senior Product Manager for ESO where she develops data reporting products and AI-driven tools to improve patient outcomes and streamline EMS operations.

David K. Tan, MD is Chief Medical Officer at the St. Charles County Ambulance District (SCCAD) and an Adjunct Professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.  Dr. Tan is SCCAD’s first full-time EMS medical director and the founding Chief of the EMS Division in the Department of Emergency Medicine at Washington University.

Nationally, Dr. Tan is past president of the National Association of EMS Physicians and a former Principal Member of the National Fire Protection Association’s Technical Committee on EMS. At the state level, he was appointed by Missouri’s governor to serve as Vice-chair of the State Advisory Committee on EMS. Regionally, he is Chairman of the Metropolitan St. Louis Emergency Transport Oversight Commission and serves as Medical Team Manager for the St. Louis Metropolitan Urban Search & Rescue (US&R) System. He is certified as a tactical EMT and is medical director of the St. Charles County Police Department and certified as a Structural Collapse Rescue Technician and Medical Specialist with St. Louis Metro US&R TF-1. He is also a graduate, with honors, from the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch.

John Wilmas, MD attended medical school at St. Louis University, completed his residency in Emergency Medicine at Washington University. He is currently an attending physician at Mercy Hospital St. Louis. Since completing residency, he has been actively involved in EMS, currently serving as Medical Director of multiple St Louis County EMS agencies including West County EMS and Fire Protection District, Kirkwood Fire Department, Olivette Fire Department, Creve Coeur Fire Protection District, Monarch Fire Protection District, Metro West Fire Protection District, Ladue Fire Department, and Frontenac Fire Department. In addition, he serves as the Medical Director for ARCH Air Medical Service and provides guidance as a National Physician Advisor for Air Methods.

Scott Youngquist, MD, MS is Chief Medical Officer for the Salt Lake City Fire Department, Salt Lake City and County 911 dispatch, and the Salt Lake International Airport. Dr. Youngquist is a Professor and the Section Chief of EMS for the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Utah, School of Medicine. He is active in translational and clinical research and the author of over 90 peer-reviewed publications. His research is focused on the prehospital treatment of cardiac arrest. He is married with four children.