The Andrew Levitt Center for Social Emergency Medicine was founded in 2008 in honor of Andrew Levitt, DO, who was the Research Director for the Highland General Hospital Department of Emergency Medicine from 1984-2004. Dr. Levitt began to apply rigorous research methods to emergency medicine practice at a time when most emergency physicians were struggling for recognition as a clinical specialty within the organized medical care system. He mentored dozens of aspiring Emergency Medicine researchers, helping each find a niche and an individual style.
After Dr. Levitt's death in 2004, his mother, Janet Levitt, and his brother and sister-in-law Dennis and Sharyn Levitt, collaborated with the Emergency Medicine faculty at Highland Hospital to create the Andrew Levitt Center for Social Emergency. With the guidance of the family, a bequest from Dr. Levitt's estate served as the inception funding for the independent non-profit research institute that bears his name.
The term social emergency medicine (SEM) was created by the founders of the Levitt Center and focuses on how medical issues and social determinants bind emergency care to patients and their communities. As Dr. Harrison Alter, co-founder of the Levitt Center describes the establishment of social emergency medicine as follows "Andy was more than a pioneer in emergency medicine research, and more than a physician. He was, quite literally, a great humanitarian… So [we] put those 3 words together—social, emergency, and medicine— and the Andrew Levitt Center for Social Emergency Medicine was born."
We believe that good emergency care extends beyond the walls of the emergency department. The Andrew Levitt Center for Social Emergency Medicine leads the transformation of emergency care to elevate the importance of home, community and society.
The growth of social emergency medicine was gradual until 2017, when the Levitt Center, in partnership with the Emergency Medicine Foundation, the American College of Emergency Medicine and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, hosted an invitational consensus conference in Dallas, Texas that called, “Inventing Social Emergency Medicine.” This led quickly to the establishment of a Section at the College, an Interest Group at the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, and a Committee at the American Academy of Emergency Medicine. Programs, divisions, and tracks in “#SocialEM” sprung up at residency programs around the country. The proceedings of the conference were published as a high-profile supplement to Annals of Emergency Medicine. (Available in our Resource Library)
Another milestone was the 2021 publication of the first textbook on social emergency medicine. Dr. Alter and others from the consensus conference helped to author Social Emergency Medicine: Principle and Practice which is an essential resource for clinicians, residents and medical students involved in social emergency medicine education and practice. An integral part of our mission is the use of information gathered through our research to develop, execute and disseminate effective interventions that both improve individual patients health and decrease health disparities.
These interventions include supporting social interventions in the Emergency Department (such as the Health Coaches program), sending researchers to conferences, encouraging publications by Levitt Center scientists and establishing community based programs. Find out more about our research and interventions below.
