Biography - Charles R. Wira, MD

Dr. Wira is board certified in Internal and Emergency Medicine with specialization in Stroke and Emergency Critical Care. He provides clinical care in the Yale Department of Emergency Medicine (DEM) and also for the Division of Vascular Neurology in the Department of Neurology. He has performed influential research in the areas of stroke, sepsis, and cardiac arrest. Dr. Wira performed laboratory based cardiac arrest hypothermia studies in animal models that changed the 2010 AHA guidelines, he was a post-hoc member of the Early Goal Directed Collaborative Group which performed a landmark clinical trial at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, MI on septic shock patients, and is involved in multiple ischemic stroke clinical trials. Dr. Wira serves as Co-PI with Dr. Kevin Sheth (Neurology) for the Yale NETT (Neurological Emergencies Treatment Trials), a spoke of the Boston NETT Clinical Trials Group. Drs Wira and Sheth brought the NETT to Yale—a NINDS funded phase III clinical trials network for neurological emergencies which represents a broad based collaboration between Emergency Medicine and Neurology. Dr. Wira and Dr Sheth also brought SIREN to Yale (Strategies to Innovate Emergency Care Clinical Trials Network) where Yale will serve as a Sub-Hub. Dr. Wira has also worked with groups evaluating predictors of symptomatic ICH in the setting of thrombolysis for acute stroke, is the creator of a Yale Septic Shock registry looking at physiologic predictors of disease escalation in sepsis, and is performing stroke systems of care research with leaders of the AHA/ASA Get-With-the-Guidelines-Stroke program.

Clinically, Dr. Wira has been a leading figure in the Yale Stroke Program, contributing to its growth, numerous awards, and recent certification as a Comprehensive Stroke Center. He also was the first to induce hypothermia in a cardiac arrest survivor both at Henry Ford Hospital and at Yale, working to bring this innovation into practice at Yale with Dr. Mark Siegel (Pulmonary Critical Care) and other faculty in different departments. Educationally, Dr. Wira has been an architect of Emergency Critical Care education in the DEM, receiving the “outstanding teaching” award for resident education, and serves as faculty research advisor for YSM thesis students, graduate students, and DEM residents.

Regionally and nationally, Dr. Wira has become a leader in Emergency Medicine. He has been appointed to the national Emergency Neurovascular Care Committee for the AHA/ASA, and is the first Emergency Medicine Physician to be elected as Chair of The NorthEast Cerebrovascular Consortium—a regional branch of the AHA/ASA striving to improve stroke-systems of care in the Northeast. He contributed towards revising the national Society of Academic Emergency Medicine (SAEM) policy statement on thrombolytic therapy, is a part of a senior writing group at SAEM publishing recommendations and producing state-of-the-art didactic sessions at national SAEM conferences regarding advanced stroke therapies, and served as a faculty contributor towards the creation of two new SAEM interest groups: the Emergency Medicine/Critical Care Medicine interest group and the Sex and Gender in Emergency Medicine interest group. Dr. Wira also has extensive involvement in state-wide stroke initiatives, having been formally appointed in 2014 by Senate Majority Leader Senator Martin M. Looney to the Connecticut Department of Health Stroke Task Force evaluating Stroke Systems of Care in Connecticut. In September 2015 he was appointed as Chair of this Task Force by the Commissioner of Public Health Dr. Jewel Mullen and oversaw a series of recommendations by state leaders given to Senator Terry Gerrantana, Chair of the Public Health Committee of the Connecticut General Assembly. The continued efforts of this group in collaboration with the AHA/ASA culminated in the passage of Senate Bill 34, “An Act Concerning the Recognition of Stroke Centers” which was signed into law by Governor Dannel Malloy in the spring of 2017 and will allocate preliminary funds to the Connecticut DOH for oversight of a state-wide system of care.

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