Personalities: When Disaster Calls

Name any major disaster in the past 25 years, and Susan Briggs, MD, MPH, has probably been among the first responders. The founder and director of the International Trauma and Disaster Institute at Massachusetts General Hospital and associate professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School has led teams helping explosion victims in the USSR, September 11th victims in New York, Hurricane Katrina victims in New Orleans, and earthquake victims in China, to name a few.

Briggs also trains local doctors in Africa and China—in fact, she mentored one of the lead doctors of the 2008 Sichuan province earthquake's response team when he was a fellow at Mass General. In October, she was honored by the American College of Surgeons with the Nina Starr Braunwald Award for her lifetime commitment to the advancement of women in surgery.

On why she established the institute: One of the real needs I felt as an academic person was the lack of standardized education for many people who respond to disasters. We're all experts in our particular field of specialty, but to participate in a disaster team you need to understand what I call the ABCs of disaster response, just as you have to understand the ABCs of trauma and ABCs of cardiac care.

On her experience helping Hurricane Katrina victims: We had so much medical talent and yet there were so many organizational problems with the federal, state, and local systems that we could not give the kind of care that we knew we could deliver right away. It was very sad that we can take expertise all over the world and then be inhibited in our own country.

On what she's learned from providing disaster relief: The thing you learn with all of these situations is that people are incredibly resilient. One of the biggest factors in a disaster is for them to feel that someone cares and someone has brought help. It changes everything. That's why I'm very proud to be part of the U.S. system and proud to be a part of Mass General because we take our expertise and reach out to people at their lowest point. You can't always save everybody but at least you can make an effort.

—Marianne Aiello