Charles B. Cairns, MD, FACEP, FAHA, a nationally recognized leader in emergency and critical care research, has been appointed assistant vice president for clinical research and clinical trials at the Arizona Health Sciences Center and vice dean of the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson. He is scheduled to begin his new duties at the UA in November.
He also will join the Department of Emergency Medicine at the UA College of Medicine – Tucson as professor.
Dr. Cairns will report to Joe G.N. “Skip” Garcia, MD, UA senior vice president for health sciences and interim dean of the UA College of Medicine – Tucson.
“I am extremely pleased that Dr. Cairns will be joining the UA in these important leadership positions with AHSC and the College of Medicine,” said Dr. Garcia. “His deep commitment to research will help us expand our health sciences research portfolio – a key component of the UA’s “Never Settle” strategic plan – and his expertise in medical education will help propel the College of Medicine forward, expanding opportunities for our students and residents.”
“Dr. Cairns is a terrific physician-scientist and team builder. His ability to bring together high impact collaborations and lead them forward is simply superb. The Arizona Health Sciences Center and the state of Arizona will greatly benefit from his leadership,” said Samuel M. Keim, MD, MS, professor and chair, UA Department of Emergency Medicine.
Dr. Cairns said, “It is an honor to be joining the UA faculty and a privilege to be working with the leadership at the Arizona Health Sciences Center. The University is well-positioned to serve the people of Arizona by developing and implementing new paradigms of health care and by providing transformational leadership in medical education and research.”
Dr. Cairns will join the UA after serving as professor and chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH), where he also serves as consulting faculty for the Duke Clinical Research Institute at Duke University Medical Center.
At UNC-CH, Dr. Cairns serves as the principal investigator (PI) of the National Collaborative for Bio-preparedness funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and as the associate director of the U.S. Critical Illness and Injury Trials Group, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). He also recently served as the PI of the National Regionalization of Emergency Medical Care Services Framework Project funded by the National Quality Forum and as co-PI of the DHHS-funded project on the Rapid Assessment of Acute Illness and Injury to Enhance the U.S. Response to Public Health Emergencies.
Dr. Cairns’ research interests include the host response to acute infections, acute asthma, trauma and cardiac resuscitation and regionalization of emergency and critical care.
At UNC-CH, Dr. Cairns has served in leadership roles in medical education and curriculum reform, health information technology strategy, university system campus security and health-care system strategic planning. He was elected by the medical students as an alumnus faculty member of the Alpha Omega Alpha honor society and named as a fellow of the UNC-CH Academy of Educators.
Prior to joining UNC-CH in 2008, Dr. Cairns served as associate chief of emergency medicine at Duke University Medical Center and director of emergency medicine research at the Duke Clinical Research Institute. He also has served on the faculty at the University of California at Los Angeles and at the University of Colorado, where he became director of the Colorado Emergency Medicine Research Center, leading it to become one of the first three national Emergency Medicine Foundation (EMF) Centers of Excellence.
Dr. Cairns has published more than 160 scientific articles and reviews. His work has appeared in such prestigious journals as the New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Emergency Medicine, Academic Emergency Medicine, Critical Care Medicine, Circulation, Chest, Journal of Trauma, Academic Medicine and Science Translational Medicine. He has received numerous awards and honors, including the EMF Established Investigator Award, the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) Outstanding Contribution in Research Award and the 2014 John Marx Leadership Award, the highest award of the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM).
Dr. Cairns has served in leadership positions in emergency and critical care medicine organizations, including co-chair of the ACEP-SAEM Research Working Group, SAEM program chair, ACEP Research Committee chair, ACEP Scientific Review Committee chair, on the EMF Board of Trustees, the Leadership Committee for the American Heart Association Council on Cardiopulmonary and Critical Care, the Steering Committee for the Critical Care Societies Collaborative Task Force on Critical Care Research, the Coordination Committee for the NIH National Asthma Education and Prevention Program and as a co-chair of the NIH Roundtables on Emergency Research. He has served on the editorial boards of both Academic Emergency Medicine and the Annals of Emergency Medicine.
Dr. Cairns is an honors graduate of Dartmouth College and was a Holderness Medical Fellow at the University of North Carolina, where he received the Medical Faculty Award as the outstanding graduating medical student. He completed an emergency medicine residency and EMF Research Fellowship at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center. He received post-graduate training in the Program in Genetics of Complex Diseases at The Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor, Maine, and the Health Care Leadership Academy at the Kenan-Flagler School of Business at the University of North Carolina. Dr. Cairns is board-certified in emergency medicine, a fellow of the American College of Emergency Physicians and a fellow of the American Heart Association.