CIRP Engineering Expert Accepts New Leadership Role

The Center for Injury Research and Prevention (CIRP) proudly announced the promotion of Kristy Arbogast, PhD, to co-scientific director. She was previously and continues to serve as the Center’s director of engineering.

Dr. Arbogast has been with CIRP since its establishment in 1996 to advance the safety and health of children, adolescents, and young adults through comprehensive research that encompasses before-the-injury prevention to after-the-injury healing. She joined Flaura K. Winston, MD, PhD, and Dennis R. Durbin, MD, MSCE, as a co-investigator on the seminal Partners for Child Passenger Safety (PCPS) project, a 10-year-long national study that led to significant policy and safety design advances for child motor vehicle occupants.

“This is a natural transition for CIRP,” said Dr. Winston, scientific director and founder of CIRP. “As Kristy’s career has matured and flourished, so has CIRP. She has helped to grow our Center’s international reputation as a thought leader in child injury prevention and pediatric biomechanics.”

Dr. Arbogast has dedicated her career to safety research, focusing on the development of new auto and restraint safety designs and biofidelic child anthropomorphic dummies. Her work was recently recognized by the receipt of an honorary doctorate from Chalmers University, Sweden.

As CIRP’s co-scientific director, Dr. Arbogast will join Dr. Winston and Ayana Bradshaw, MPH, CIRP’s administrative director, in leading a group of behavioral scientists, clinicians, epidemiologists, biostatisticians, engineers, public health practitioners, and communications professionals that focus on injury prevention, violence prevention, physical and emotional recovery following injury, digital health, and pediatric biomechanics.

“I have benefitted from the interdisciplinary structure of CIRP,” Dr. Arbogast said. “Working with colleagues from diverse academic backgrounds and research interests has expanded my own understanding of child injury prevention. We are all dedicated to translating our research into action to reduce preventable child injuries and deaths.”

Most recently, Dr. Arbogast has extended her work to include the study of concussions, not only from motor vehicle crashes, but also from sports. She served on the Institute of Medicine Committee on Sports Concussions in Youth and is also a member of the National Council on Youth Sports Safety. Since 2011, Dr. Arbogast has co-led a multi-disciplinary project at CHOP called Minds Matter: Improving Pediatric Concussion Management that streamlined and standardized concussion diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up care across the CHOP network.

Dr. Arbogast continues to serve as the co-director of the National Science Foundation-sponsored Center for Child Injury Prevention Studies (CChIPS) at CHOP, University of Pennsylvania and The Ohio State University. She is also research associate professor of pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania.