Dr. Gregory Ciottone

Brief Biography:

Dr. Ciottone is a U.S. board certified Emergency Physician with more than 20 years experience in academic, clinical, and international medicine.  He is a recognized expert in Disaster Medicine, Emergency Management, and International Healthcare Infrastructure Development. Dr. Ciottone has served as a consultant in more than 30 countries around the world, and is Editor-in-Chief of the textbook "Disaster Medicine" published by Elsevier-Mosby. The second edition, "Ciottone's Disaster Medicine", is currently in press

Current Positions:

Dr. Ciottone is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston Massachusetts, where he currently is the Director of the Disaster Medicine Division at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Dr. Ciottone is the Founder and Director of the first-ever Disaster Medicine Fellowship Program at a Harvard Medical School teaching hospital. In addition to these appointments, Dr. Ciottone is a Visiting Professor at the Universita del Piemonte Orientale in Italy, and Vrije Universiteit Brussel in Belgium.
Dr. Ciottone does significant pro bono work for underprivileged populations in developing countries, putting in over 2 1/2 years of his time free of charge over his career. He is now honored and proud to serve as Medical Director for Child in Hand (www.childinhand.org) and the Be Like Brit Program (www.belikebrit.org), both caring for the most at risk post-earthquake orphaned children of Haiti

Recent Awards and Honored Positions

1990-2000

Dr. Ciottone graduated the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1991, receiving the Society of Academic Emergency Medicine “Excellence in Emergency Medicine” award. He then completed his Emergency Medicine Residency at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, and was selected by the faculty and his peers as Chief Resident. In 1994 Dr. Ciottone was selected to head the Division of International Disaster and Emergency Medicine at the University of Massachusetts, and in 1995 he was selected to lead the Washington DC based American International Health Alliance (AIHA) Emergency Medicine Task Force for the former Soviet Union. Also in 1995, he was selected as Commander of the federal Disaster Medical Assistance Team (DMAT) Massachusetts-2, a Level-1 response team of the National Disaster Medical System. In 1997, Dr. Ciottone was elected Fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians, and in 1998, he was appointed Disaster Medicine Fellowship Director for the International Atomic Energy Agency in Geneva Switzerland. Dr. Ciottone also became Disaster Medicine/EMS Fellowship Director at the University of Massachusetts in 1998. In 1999, Dr. Ciottone was appointed Director of the AIHA partnership program in Minsk, Belarus.

2000-present

In 2000, Dr. Ciottone was appointed Director of the Division of Disaster and Emergency Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where he was also appointed Medical Director for Emergency Management. In 2001, Dr. Ciottone won an Official Citation from the Massachusetts Senate for his work at Ground Zero during the 9/11/2001 federal response, and was personally thanked by Tommy Thompson, the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. In 2002, Dr. Ciottone was selected as Medical Director for the Tactical EMS training program at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Academy in Quantico, VA. Also in 2002, Dr. Ciottone was named Chairman of the International Emergency Medicine Section at Harvard Medical School. In 2003, Dr. Ciottone was appointed Certification Director for the Tuscan Emergency Medicine Initiative in Florence, Italy. In 2004, he was appointed Medical Director for the Operational Medicine Program, Office of Security and Investigations, United States Citizenship and Immigration Service, Department of Homeland Security, Washington, DC. Dr. Ciottone was then appointed Editor-in-Chief of the textbook Disaster Medicine, published by Elsevier/Mosby in 2006. Also in 2006, Dr. Ciottone was selected as one of “America’s Top Physicians” by the Consumer Research Council of America. He was again selected in 2008 and 2009.

In 2007, Dr. Ciottone was named “EMSPhysician of the Year” by Central Massachusetts Emergency Medical Services (EMS), and in 2008 he was the “Spotlight” for the Phi Beta Kappa national publication Keynote Reporter. Dr. Ciottone was named Founding Principle of the Russian American Medical Center project in Tver, Russia in 2008, a project shepherded by Mikhail Gorbachev. Also in 2008, the World Champion Boston Red Sox honored Dr. Ciottone by having him throw out the Ceremonial First Pitch as part of the 9/11 remembrance ceremonies at Fenway Park. In 2009, while working in conjunction with Mikhail Gorbachev and the Gorbachev Foundation towards improved healthcare infrastructure in Russia, Dr. Ciottone served as a personal envoy from President Gorbachev to the U.S. Governmental Agency the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC). In 2010, Dr. Ciottone was named by the Russian Federation Ministries of Education and Science as an approved Evaluation Expert for the New Eurasia Foundation, as defined within the framework of Resolution No. 220 of the Russian Federation Government. Later in 2010, Dr. Ciottone was appointed Medical Director of the Child In Hand project in Haiti. Also in 2010, Dr. Ciottone was appointed to the faculty of the Executive MPH in Emergency and Disaster Management program at Tel Aviv University. In 2011, Dr. Ciottone was selected by USAID as one of two U.S. experts for consultation in Tajikistan on the epidemic of polio in the Central Asian Region, and other infectious disease epidemic threat preparedness and disaster response planning. Also in 2011, Dr. Ciottone was appointed to the European Master in Disaster Medicine Academy in Geneva Switzerland, an international disaster prevention and response policy institute operated through the Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève. Recently, Dr. Ciottone was appointed Medical Director of the Be Like Brit Foundation, a program in Haiti shepherded by the Senatorial and Congressional delegations of Massachusetts.

Select Past Experience

After completing residency, Dr. Ciottone was named to the University of Massachusetts faculty where he rose to the level of Assistant Professor before being asked to join the faculty at Harvard Medical School in 1999. He has extensive field experience, including 10 years as a Flight Physician for a LifeFlight rescue helicopter system.

Since 1993 Dr. Ciottone has taught Emergency Medicine, Disaster Medicine and Emergency Management throughout Europe, Russia, and the Commonwealth of Independent States, where he played a key role in the development of 22 Emergency Medicine, Disaster Medicine, andEMStraining centers, sponsored by the American International Health Alliance (AIHA) and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Under his leadership, the Harvard Medical School International Section developed curricula in various areas of Emergency Medicine that have been used to instruct over 40,000 medical and non-medical personnel around the world. He currently works in conjunction with Mikhail Gorbachev and the Gorbachev Foundation developing advanced Medical Simulation training centers in Russia.

Through his role as Commander of the DMAT Massachusetts-2, Dr. Ciottone led this level-1 federal disaster response team on numerous deployments, the most notable of which was the World Trade Center response on September 11, 2001, where his was one of the first federal disaster teams into Ground Zero. Remaining on site for 2 weeks, his team treated 400 casualties per day in five field stations.

In 2001, Dr. Ciottone became an Implementing Partner of the United Nations Development Program. This prestigious title is given to select international experts, allowing them to work as consultants to the family of United Nations organizations. Through this role Dr. Ciottone became Editor for the UN training module “Disaster Management for Terrorist Events.” This manual is used by the United Nations to train personnel worldwide on the preparedness for and response to terrorist attacks.

In 2004 Dr. Ciottone was named to the faculty of the European Master of Disaster Medicine (EMDM). Arguably the premier educational program in Disaster Medicine in the world, Dr. Ciottone was one of only two Americans appointed to the faculty at that time. He continues teaching at the EMDM today.

Dr. Ciottone continues to lecture around the world on Emergency Medicine, Disaster Management, and Quality Assurance issues, and is a nationally and internationally known expert in these fields. He is consistently requested as a Key Note Speaker or Chairman at Medical congresses around the world, and is a Founding Member of the United States Department of Homeland Security.

Academic positions:

Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School

Chairman, Disaster Medicine Section, Harvard Medical School

Research interests:

Disaster Medicine

Remote access technology applications in austere environments

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