Alexis Kearney, MD, MPH is a practicing emergency physician, researcher, and educator, focusing on global emergency medicine and outbreak prevention and response. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine at The Alpert Medical School of Brown University. Alexis graduated from Middlebury College magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish in 2005. She subsequently attended Yale University School of Public Health and graduated in 2007 with a Master of Public Health, focusing on the epidemiology of microbial disease. Following graduation, she worked for the Clinton Foundation in Ethiopia on the Ethiopia Hospital Management Initiative. Alexis attended medical school at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, in New York City. While attending medical school, she worked for the CDC in Nairobi, Kenya, and Bangkok, Thailand. She completed internship and residency at Brown University. While in residency, Alexis participated in various courses and trainings to expand her knowledge of global health and disaster response, including the Health Emergencies in Large Populations (HELP) Course and the Harvard Humanitarian Response Intensive Course (HRIC). She also conducted research on emergency department patients presenting to an urban hospital in Kigali, Rwanda. More recently, much of her international work has centered around emergency medicine development in Ecuador. She currently serves as the ACEP International Deputy Ambassador to Ecuador.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Alexis collaborated with colleagues at Brown EM and Project Hope, an international NGO, to create and teach a series of multi-hour webinars for international healthcare workers focused on scientific updates, infection prevention and control, and communication strategies to improve outbreak response. Since 2021, she has also worked locally, as a consultant medical director at the Rhode Island Department of Health. She initially joined RIDOH during the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the response team, however, since then, has transitioned to serve as the medical director for Project Firstline – a CDC sponsored infection prevention and control training initiative aimed at improving IPC knowledge among healthcare workers in RI.
Alexis currently coordinates international electives for emergency medicine residents at Brown. She also serves as the Faculty Advisor for EM residents participating in the BRIGHT Pathway for Global Health and as the Faculty Liaison for Brown medical students participating in a formal medical exchange program with Hospitál Regional Universitario José María Cabral y Báez. She is also the assistant course director for Leadership in Healthcare at the medical school.
