Dara Kass

Last updated
Dara Kass
Born
Dara Ann Gitlin

September 6, 1977
Brooklyn, NY
Alma mater University of Maryland, College Park, BS, 1998
SUNY Downstate Medical Center, MD, 2003
Known for COVID-19 response
Children3
Scientific career
Fields Emergency medicine
Institutions Columbia University
New York-Presbyterian Hospital
Websitedarakass.com

Dara Ann Kass (born September 6, 1977) is a practicing emergency medicine physician and a consultant in healthcare policy and impact. She is a longtime advocate for advancing the careers of women in medicine. While treating patients during the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, Kass became infected, sharing her disease course and serving as a public health messenger. Since the  Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization supreme court decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization she has focused on healthcare policy and advocacy related to reproductive healthcare, specifically on the care patients receive in Emergency Departments.

Contents

Early Life

Kass was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. Her mother was an emergency medicine nurse at Brookdale Hospital in Brooklyn and inspired Kass's career in medicine. She attended the University of Maryland, College Park, where she received her Bachelor of Science degree in neurobiology and physiology in 1998. She returned to Brooklyn to study medicine at SUNY Downstate Medical School, where she received her Doctor of Medicine degree in 2003. From 2003 to 2007, she completed her residency training in emergency medicine at SUNY Downstate Kings County Hospital.

Career

Kass began her post-residency medical career as an attending physician at Staten Island University Hospital, where she remained for five years between 2007 and 2013, helping to start their emergency medicine residency. In 2013 she moved to NYU Langone Medical Center. There, she ran the medical school programs in the emergency department, serving as the Director of Undergraduate Medical Education. In 2018, she became the Director of Equity and Inclusion and Associate Professor at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. She has worked at Montefiore Medical Center since 2024.

FemInEM

Kass founded FemInEM, a platform dedicated to supporting women in emergency medicine and advocating for gender equity in the field in 2016. FemInEM provides resources, mentorship, and networking opportunities for women physicians and other professionals in emergency medicine. The organization was pivotal in raising awareness about the unique challenges faced by women in medicine, such as gender bias, pay disparities, and work-life balance issues. Under Kass’s leadership, FemInEM hosted conferences, published research and opinion pieces, and built a robust online community to empower women and promote systemic change. The initiative has been widely recognized as a transformative force in fostering inclusivity and representation in emergency medicine.

COVID-19 Work

While treating patients in New York City, Kass became infected with the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). When she first began treating coronavirus patients, she sent her children to live with her parents in New Jersey, while dividing up her home with her husband to prevent infecting her family. While she was in quarantine recovering from the disease, she continued to advocate for the growing urgency of the situation, noting emergency rooms overwhelmed with patients, shortages of ventilators and personal protective equipment for doctors, and the risks posed to healthcare workers inundated with COVID-19 cases. She has also discussed the risk the pandemic poses to healthcare workers' mental health as they will begin making decisions about whom to treat and whom to not treat in light of hospital supply shortages. As she began to recover, Kass began virtually consulting with patients using telemedicine technologies. During the COVID pandemic, she has appeared regularly as a medical expert on national cable news.

Kass was critical of the Trump administration's response to the pandemic, citing inadequate attention paid to the forecasters' projections when they began warning of an emerging crisis in January and a continuing lack of federal oversight and coordination in response to the pandemic.

Role at HHS

Kass served in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as a Regional Director, in the Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs from 2021 until 2024. During her tenure at HHS, Kass was instrumental in improving public communication strategies around major health initiatives, including the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic. She played a key role in fostering collaborations between government agencies, healthcare professionals, and community organizations to enhance public health education and vaccine outreach. Kass leveraged her clinical expertise and public presence to address misinformation and build trust in federal health policies. Kass was at HHS when the Dobbs decision came down from the US Supreme Court, and worked on federal policy to protect reproductive health care while still at the agency.

Advocacy

Kass is an advocate for the advancement of women in medicine. She is a founding member of Time's Up Healthcare, working to root out sexual and gender harassment in medicine. She is also the founder and CEO of FemInEM, a blog and conference with a mission of promoting gender equity in emergency medicine since its inception in 2015. She has also written about the harassment that women in medicine experience even from their patients in the wake of reports that Les Moonves sexually harassed his physician. She also currently serves as the Director of Equity and Inclusion Initiatives at Columbia University Medical Center.

Since 2022 Kass has been working on protecting access to reproductive healthcare services, specifically through existing channels in emergency departments. She has been the Clinical Lead and Strategic Director at Access Bridge, an organization working to improve reproductive Healthcare in emergency care. She is also a board member for Americans for Contraception, an organization dedicated to protecting contraception access in the United States.

In addition to her work on promoting gender equity in medicine, Kass serves on the board of the nonprofit ORGANIZE, working to reform the organ donation system.

Awards and honors

Personal life

Kass is a mother of three children. Her youngest son, Sammy, was diagnosed with a rare condition known as alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, which results in severely impaired liver function. While some infants outgrow the condition, her son did not. As a result,, she chose to act as a living donor, donating a part of her liver to her son and recounted the experience in The New York Times. She has since advocated for revamping federal rules around U.S.'s organ donation system to increase access to organ donations.

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References

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