Dr. Jason Emsley is the Research Director for the IWK Emergency Department. He is a Trauma Team Leader and Medical Director of Trauma at the IWK Children’s Health Centre. He serves as a Staff Emergency Physician at the IWK and Halifax Infirmary and is the Program Medical Director for Pediatric Ground Transport (Nova Scotia EHS). Jason received his MD from Dalhousie University and is a graduate of the FRCPC emergency medicine program with a subspecialty fellowship in Pediatric Emergency Medicine. He completed a BSc at the University of Alberta, and an MSc and PhD in Neuroscience from Dalhousie University. He is a former postdoctoral fellow and instructor at Harvard Medical School (Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Stem Cell Institute).
Jason’s biomedical research focuses on central nervous system development and how our understanding of neural development can be applied to repairing the adult CNS in trauma or various neurodegenerative disorders. His clinical research focuses on pediatric trauma epidemiology and pre-hospital mortality, the effects of trauma team activations on departmental flow, and the ability of emergency department staff to recognize signs of human trafficking. He is currently the IWK site PI for the multinational PRoMPT BOLUS trial on resuscitation fluids in pediatric sepsis. Jason also serves as the PERC site PI for the Public Health Agency of Canada COVID surveillance program. Recent studies arising from the surveillance program have focused on long COVID in children, changing symptomatology of COVID variants, and racial and socioeconomic factors influencing pediatric COVID care. As of 2024, he is the senior IWK Site PI for the SPRINT-KIDS Surveillance Program for the Rapid IdeNtification and TracKing of Infectious Diseases in kidS, a national network that monitors vaccine preventable illnesses, vaccine effectiveness, and adverse events following immunization.