Lynne D. Richardson is the Vice Chair for Academic, Research and Community Programs of the Department of Emergency Medicine.  She is a nationally recognized expert in health services research; her areas of interest are access to care and improving effective utilization of health care resources.  She was the Principal Investigator of the Emergency Medicine Patients' Access to Healthcare (EMPATH) Study and the New York City Site Principal Investigator for the PAD Trial, an NHLBI-funded, randomized trial of public access defibrillation.  She was the PI of '"Community VOICES" (Views On Informed Consent In Emergency Situations), an NHLBI-funded project to study community perspectives on the ethics of research without consent in emergency conditions; and is currently the PI on a continuing competition of this study - Community VOICES 2.  She has served onthe Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's Research Training study section, and review panels for the National Institute for Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and the National Heart, Lung & Blood Institute.  She was a member of the Institute of Medicine Committee to Review the National Institutes of Health Strategic Plan to Reduce and Ultimately Eliminate Health Disparities. Dr. Richardson chairs the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP) Public Health Committee and serves on their Scientific Review Committee; she is also the national ACEP liaison to the Commission to End Healthcare Disparities.  Her other memberships include the joint Society for Academic Emergency Medicine / Council of Residency Directors Diversity Curriculum Task Force, the New York City Board of Health and the NYC Advisory Committee on Weapons of Mass Destruction.  She has presented at many scientific meetings, and has authored articles on asthma, bioethics, emergency department crowding, the healthcare safety net, public access defibrillation, and cultural competence.  She lectures frequently to both professional and lay audiences.

Dr. Richardson was recently honored by ACEP as a "Hero of Emergency Medicine" and received the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mount Sinai Institute of Medical Education.  She has been recognized for "teaching a generation of doctors that morality and medicine must go hand in hand" in New York Magazine's Hall of Fame in their "Best Doctors in New York" issue and was featured in Black Enterprise Magazine's "America's Top Black Physicians" as a "Major Contributor to the Medical Field."  She has received numerous awards for distinguished service, for leadership and for outstanding teaching from various academic institutions, professional organizations and community groups.  Throughout her career, Dr. Richardson has been a vocal advocate for improved health and healthcare for the underserved.

Dr. Richardson is one of the Principal Investigators for Projects ENGAGE and ENGAGE II (Engaging Neighborhoods in General and Personalized Genomics Education).  Project ENGAGE was funded by the Institute of Personalized Medicine (IPM) in 2009 to explore community attitudes about genomics and personalized medicine, and to identify informational needs and preferences of community members.  Dr. Richardson is leading the community engagement aim of Project ENGAGE and is currently completing Spanish language focus groups and interviews to inform the development of informational modules in English and Spanish.