National Center for School Crisis and Bereavement

Natasha Gill, MD, MPH, FAAP

Natasha Gill is Pediatric Emergency Medicine (PEM) faculty and the Emergency Department (ED) Co-Director of Disaster Management at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles (CHLA). She is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Pediatrics (“Traditional Research Track”) for the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine. She serves on the national American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) Council on Children and Disasters (COCD) Executive Committee and is the Co-Chair of the AAP COCD Education Committee. She is a strong advocate for disaster preparedness efforts to include children with special attention to those at risk for health disparities. Dr. Gill has led administrative, research, and educational initiatives to improve coordination, preparation, and response for disasters. Her passion for pediatric disaster preparedness started in her PEM fellowship training at Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence, RI where she co-founded the Pediatric ED Emergency Preparedness Committee and worked with local public health entities to promote an organized, systematic disaster response. Concurrent to her fellowship training, she completed a Master’s in Public Health (MPH) at Brown University School of Public Health to improve her skills in designing and implementing studies, communicating effectively with those receiving versus providing healthcare, and networking with public health agencies and disaster preparedness organizations. Her academic interests include systems-based quality improvement, mixed methods research, simulation, and formal mentorship of students and trainees. She has been awarded institutional and federal-combined grants as a trainee and early-career physician to study health disparities in pediatric wildfire preparedness, ED disaster surge capacity, physician and nursing disaster triage knowledge, and fundamentals of hemorrhage control during a mass casualty incident. When she’s not putting out fires, she loves to travel, eat exotic foods, host game night, and play with her toddler and puppy.