Kobi (Jacob) Peleg (born in 1958) is an Israeli professor of Emergency and Disaster Management at Tel-Aviv University, and formerly the director of the Israel National Center for Trauma & Emergency Medicine Research at the Gertner Institute for Epidemiology and Health Policy Research.
Peleg was raised in Ramat-Gan. He joined the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in 1976 and served as a paratrooper until his enrollment into medics' course. He completed his officer's training and was promoted as a medical organization officer.
Peleg served in a number of positions in the Medical Corps of the IDF, including chief instructor at the IDF's medical training school and commander of the training facility of the Medical Corps. During the First Gulf War, he served as the head of the medicine branch at the civil defense directorate (nowadays: Home Front Command) and was tasked with overseeing the medical operations at the home front. Between 1997 and 1998, while in uniforms, he was lent to the Ministry of Health to serve as a senior consultant to the Minister, as well as a board member of Magen David Adom (Israel's Emergency Medical Services).
Between 1998 and 2001 he was the commander of the IDF's Medical Training School. During this period he was tasked with the medical management of many mass casualty incidents throughout Israel. He was discharged from military service as an Army Colonel.
Peleg holds a Bachelor's degree in politics, sociology and psychology from Bar-Ilan University, a Master's degree in public health with emphasis on health management from The Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (Bethesda, Maryland), and a PhD in Health Administration and Policy from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
Following his discharge from the IDF, he established the National Center for Trauma & Emergency Medicine Research at Gertner Institute. The center deals with the study of injury in Israel and abroad and is considered one of the leading research centers in the field of injury epidemiology, specifically in the field of mass casualty and terrorism. The center is also serving as the home of national trauma registry of Israel, which was established in 1995 by Vita Barell. [1] Since its establishment, the center has published close to 200 papers in leading medical journals [2]
In 2005, Prof. Peleg co-established the Master's Program for Emergency and Disaster Management at Tel-Aviv University. [3] In 2010, the program was expanded to include an international equivalent for foreign students. Since their establishment, these programs qualified hundreds of alumni who were incorporated into emergency management and humanitarian relief work in Israel and elsewhere.
In 2008, he was appointed as an expert by the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination, a UN agency for international emergency response for sudden-onset emergencies. In parallel, he was tasked by the World Health Organization to serve as a mentor in the verification process of emergency medical teams responding to disaster-stricken regions. [4] In 2017, he was elected chairperson of the board of directors of the World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine. [5] In addition, he holds several positions as board member in national and international committees, such as the Israeli National Committee for Mass Casualty Management.
In his position as the head of the National Center for Trauma & Emergency Medicine Research, Prof. Peleg led many groundbreaking and innovative studies in the field of disaster medicine and terror-related injuries.
Among these is a pioneering study performed in the 1990s to develop an optimized, GIS-based model for reducing ambulances' response time in emergencies. [6] This is one of the most cited papers in the field of disaster medicine and has become a cornerstone in designing ambulance architecture in many developed countries. Other important studies performed or led by Prof. Peleg concern differences in injury patterns between war and terror injuries, civilian versus military casualties, and gunshot compared to blast injuries. In addition, Prof. Peleg was also leading an innovative research that explored different reimbursement methods to influence higher survivability among hip fracture patients. [7] The study was extensively cited [8] and its outcomes led to health policy changes in Israel and abroad.
Additional studies performed or led by Prof. Peleg brought about significant insights for the understanding of terror-related injury mechanisms, including the development of a new paradigm of injuries from terrorist explosions as a function of explosion setting type. [9] [10] Also among these are studies relating to characterization of injury patterns resulting from terror incidents [11] and optimization of hospitals responses to mass casualty incidents. [12] The research conducted by Prof. Peleg greatly contributed to Israeli and worldwide improvement of medical treatment of injuries resulting from mass-casualty incidents.
Prof. Peleg is highly involved in humanitarian aid to disaster affected areas. In December 1988 he served as the deputy head of the medical delegation (field hospital) to Kirovakan (today: Vanadzor) in Armenia. In 1995 he participated and was responsible for the operational dispatching of the IDF's field hospital following the Rwandan genocide. In September 2009, he was dispatched as an UNDAC expert to assist the government of Indonesia in assessing the needs and coordinating international aid following the West Sumatra earthquake.
Several months later, following the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake, he joined the Israeli field hospital to extend medical aid to casualties. [13] Similarly, in 2013, he participated in the Israeli field hospital dispatched to assist the victims of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines. [14] In 2015, he was again dispatched as an UNDAC expert to coordinate the medical relief to earthquake-struck Nepal, where he collaborated with other UN and WHO experts to establish a more robust mechanism for assessing medical needs and coordinating medical aid extended by international medical teams. [15]
The experience gained by Prof. Peleg in his humanitarian work brought him to suggest paradigm-shifting recommendations in the field of medical relief post disasters. [16] In particular, Prof. Peleg is leading a global effort to expand mass training of the public in light search and rescue skills. [17] This innovative approach to life saving following massive earthquakes draws from both academic sources [18] and field experience.
In medicine, triage is a process by which care providers such as medical professionals and those with first aid knowledge determine the order of priority for providing treatment to injured individuals and/or inform the rationing of limited supplies so that they go to those who can most benefit from it. Triage is usually relied upon when there are more injured individuals than available care providers, or when there are more injured individuals than supplies to treat them.
Battlefield medicine, also called field surgery and later combat casualty care, is the treatment of wounded combatants and non-combatants in or near an area of combat. Civilian medicine has been greatly advanced by procedures that were first developed to treat the wounds inflicted during combat. With the advent of advanced procedures and medical technology, even polytrauma can be survivable in modern wars. Battlefield medicine is a category of military medicine.
Hospital emergency codes are coded messages often announced over a public address system of a hospital to alert staff to various classes of on-site emergencies. The use of codes is intended to convey essential information quickly and with minimal misunderstanding to staff while preventing stress and panic among visitors to the hospital. Such codes are sometimes posted on placards throughout the hospital or are printed on employee identification badges for ready reference.
Disaster medicine is the area of medical specialization serving the dual areas of providing health care to disaster survivors and providing medically related disaster preparation, disaster planning, disaster response and disaster recovery leadership throughout the disaster life cycle. Disaster medicine specialists provide insight, guidance and expertise on the principles and practice of medicine both in the disaster impact area and healthcare evacuation receiving facilities to emergency management professionals, hospitals, healthcare facilities, communities and governments. The disaster medicine specialist is the liaison between and partner to the medical contingency planner, the emergency management professional, the incident command system, government and policy makers.
A mass casualty incident describes an incident in which emergency medical services resources, such as personnel and equipment, are overwhelmed by the number and severity of casualties. For example, an incident where a two-person crew is responding to a motor vehicle collision with three severely injured people could be considered a mass casualty incident. The general public more commonly recognizes events such as building collapses, train and bus collisions, plane crashes, earthquakes and other large-scale emergencies as mass casualty incidents. Events such as the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, the September 11 attacks in 2001, and the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 are well-publicized examples of mass casualty incidents. The most common types of MCIs are generally caused by terrorism, mass-transportation accidents, fires or natural disasters. A multiple casualty incident is one in which there are multiple casualties. The key difference from a mass casualty incident is that in a multiple casualty incident the resources available are sufficient to manage the needs of the victims. The issue of resource availability is therefore critical to the understanding of these concepts. One crosses over from a multiple to a mass casualty incident when resources are exceeded and the systems are overwhelmed.
Isaac Ashkenazi is an Israeli Professor of Disaster Medicine at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel and a consultant to Harvard University. He is considered one of the world’s foremost experts in medical preparedness for complex emergencies and disasters.
A wilderness medical emergency is a medical emergency that takes place in a wilderness or remote setting affinitive care. Such an emergency can require specialized skills, treatment techniques, and knowledge in order to manage the patient for an extended period of time before and during evacuation.
Mass gathering medicine, also known as event medicine,crowd medicine or mass gathering health, is a field of medicine that explores the health effects/risks of mass gatherings and the strategies that contribute positively to effective health services delivery during these events. The reason for the development of the field of medicine gives the fact that mass gatherings generate a higher incidence of injury and illness, may be the subject to a catastrophic accident or attack with large numbers of injured or dead persons.
Mordechai Shani is an Israeli physician. He is Professor of Healthcare Systems at Tel Aviv University. He served as the Director General of the Sheba Medical Center. He was the recipient of the Israel Prize in 2009.
Tactical Combat Casualty Care are the United States military guidelines for trauma life support in prehospital combat medicine, designed to reduce preventable deaths while maintaining operation success. The TCCC guidelines are routinely updated and published by the Committee on Tactical Combat Casualty Care (CoTCCC), which is part of the Defense Committees on Trauma (DCoT) division of the Defense Health Agency (DHA). TCCC was designed in the 1990s for the Special Operations Command medical community. Originally a joint Naval Special Warfare Command and Special Operations Medical Research & Development initiative, CoTCCC developed combat-appropriate and evidence-based trauma care based on injury patterns of previous conflicts. The original TCCC corpus was published in a Military Medicine supplement in 1996. TCCC has since become a Department of Defense (DoD) course, conducted by National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians.
Amitai Ziv, MD, MHA is an Israeli physician, professor of Medical Education at Tel Aviv University, deputy director of the Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer, founder and Director of MSR - The Israel Center for Medical Simulation.
Limor Aharonson-Daniel is an Israeli emergency preparedness expert.
Joshua Shemer is an Israeli professor, doctor, and chair of the Assuta Medical Centers network in Israel, currently building and developing the new advanced highly sophisticated public hospital in the city of Ashdod, the first of its kind built in Israel in the past forty years. He formerly served as Director General of Maccabi Healthcare Services, providing health services to 24% of the Israeli population. Shemer served as director general of the Ministry of Health and Surgeon General of the Israel Defense Forces Military Health Corps, holding the rank of brigadier general.
Jonathan Halevy is an Israeli public healthcare expert and physician. He served as the Director General of Jerusalem's Shaare Zedek Medical Center from 1988 until 2019 and currently serves as the hospital's president.
Hamidreza Khankeh is an Iranian scientist in the field of Emergency and Disaster Health and former chancellor of the University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Sciences. He became known for his development of national guidelines to prepare hospitals against disasters, National Respond Framework in disasters and the integration emergency numbers in Iran. He has been a member Academy of Medical Science Iran since 2016... Khankeh has been head of department and research center of Health in Emergency and Disaster in University of Social Welfare and Rehabilitation Science Tehran since 2012. From 2017 he has held vice chancellor for National Emergency Medical Organization of Iran, national advisor for deputy of nursing in Ministry of Health in emergency and disaster and also advisor of National Disaster Management Organization and Tehran Disaster Mitigation and Management Organization (TDMMO)
Arnon Afek is an Israeli physician who specializes in pathology and medical management. Afek served as Director-General of the Israeli Ministry of Health in 2014–2015. He is currently Deputy Director-General of Sheba Medical Center and acting director of Sheba General Hospital at Tel Hashomer.
Thomas Dean Kirsch is an American physician, scientist, and writer whose career has focused on disaster preparedness and response. He has been described as “…an expert in disaster research, planning and response, and disaster and wilderness medicine… both nationally and internationally”.
Yitshak Kreiss is an Israeli physician and Director General of Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer. Kreiss served in the Israel Defense Forces in various capacities for 25 years, achieving the rank of Brigadier General. In 2011, he was appointed Surgeon General of the IDF. Kreiss is an expert in disaster medical relief.
Nadav Davidovitch is a public health physician, epidemiologist and the chair of Israel's association of Public Health Physicians. He replaced Hagai Levine, in 2021, as interim director. Davidovitch has also served as chair of the Center for Health Policy Research in the Negev. Considered an infectious disease expert, he is also a member of Israel's “corona czar’s” advisory committee.
Boleslaw (Bolek) Goldman is an Emeritus Professor in the Sackler Faculty of Medicine in Tel Aviv University.
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