about
Grassroots Emergency Medicine (GEM) is born from a group of emergency physicians passionate about advocating for patients and access to quality emergency medical care. There are a lot of voices out there contributing to health policy, emergency physicians must take a seat at the table. Medical and specialty societies advocate for us but sometimes these large organizations lose sight of topics on-the-ground emergency physicians care about or are not agile enough to respond to rapidly-changing health policy efforts.
We encourage emergency physicians who work in all types of practice settings, locations, and employers to join.
We provide a front-line perspective on how critical health policies will affect patients, emergency medical care, and the emergency medicine workforce.
For emergency physicians, we offer our expertise, resources and advocacy guidance.
While our members may participate in national medical and emergency specialty societies, we do not accept funding nor are we a division of any large national emergency medicine organization. We do not speak on behalf of nor accept funding from any CMG or any private-equity groups.
Our Board
Theresa "Reese" Tassey, MD, MPH
Reese is a board-certified Emergency Physician working in an underserved urban community hospital. She completed a fellowship in Health Policy and has worked on both state and federal policies. She continues to work in advocacy and consulting.
Gary Katz, MD, MBA, FACEP
Gary is a board-certified Emergency Physician who works for an independent group in a rural community in Ohio. He has a long history of leadership and advocacy at the state and national level.
Mark Pappadakis, DO
Mark completed Emergency Medicine residency at Metropolitan Hospital in NYC, providing care to the underserved. He now resides in his home state of PA and works at a community hospital serving Trenton, NJ. He is active in national advocacy with the PA Medical Society, the PA and NJ ACEP chapters.
Amy Mecozzi Cho, MD, MBA
Amy is a board-certified Emergency Physician with an independent group of physicians in Minnesota. Amy runs her own blog and previously worked as a management consultant with Bain & Co. and as a product manager with Convio.
Damian E. Caraballo, MD, FACEP
Damian is a board-certified Emergency Physician in Tampa, FL. He has worked as both a political director and senior director of quality in Florida. He is actively involved in Florida and National physician and healthcare advocacy. He completed his residency at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Jason Adler, MD, FACEP, FAAEM
Jason is board certified Emergency Physician working at an academic medical center in Maryland. He has national leadership experience on the topics of medical coding, payor policy, practice management consulting and patient advocacy.