Presented by: Prasanthi Govindarajan, MD, Associate Professor of Emergency Medicine, Stanford University
Talk Title: “Prehospital stroke transport policies and Effects – Lessons Learned and Future Directions”

Bio: Dr. Govindarajan is a health services researcher with expertise in emergency medical services and healthcare systems. She completed her emergency medicine residency at Boston Medical Center, a fellowship in emergency medical services, and a master’s in clinical research at the University of California, San Diego. She started as a full-time faculty in 2007  at the University of California, San Francisco, and is currently an associate professor of emergency medicine at Stanford University Medical Center. She practices emergency medicine at Stanford Health Care, an academic emergency department in Northern California, and contributes to research training for residents, fellows, and early to mid-stage faculty.

Her research aims to improve access to specialized centers for acute stroke care through early detection of stroke and appropriate triage and transport in the prehospital setting. Her early work on stroke detection by emergency medical services and the effects of county-level ambulance transport policies on stroke treatment (K08 HS17965 from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality) has led to a national mixed-methods study on the effectiveness of a stroke destination protocol for emergency medical service providers. This study is an ongoing collaboration with S-SPIRE. It is funded by the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality (R01 HS026207).

Through funding from industry, foundations, and philanthropy, she has made valuable scientific contributions to the prehospital community – feasibility of prehospital telemedicine, effects of training and education on large vessel occlusion by paramedics, and effects of destination protocols on stroke. She is working with the data science team at S-SPIRE and the policy analysts at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (Division of Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention) to develop best practice guidelines and provide evidence on the effects of integrated systems of emergency care for stroke.

Each week, S-SPIRE hosts a Work-In-Progress session (WIP) for faculty members and trainees to present their research and receive feedback on projects in every phase of development—from drafting specific aims pages, to parsing grant review committee comments, to abstracts/papers/methods in preparation.

Please refer inquiries to Ana Mezynski at mezynski@stanford.edu