ImpactLife Announces New CMO; Louis Katz to Transition to Emeritus Status

ImpactLife recently named Daniela Hermelin, MD, as the organization’s next chief medical officer. Hermelin will assume the role effective July 1 when ImpactLife’s current CMO Louis Katz, MD, transitions to emeritus status.

Hermelin is currently an assistant professor of Pathology at SSM Health St. Louis University School of Medicine and the medical director of transfusion services at SSM Health St. Louis University Hospital and SSM Health Cardinal Glennon Children’s Hospital. She is also the social media editor for Transfusion Medicine Reviews, an associate editor of The Blood Bank Guy Essentials podcast, associate editor of Transfusion News and an at-large member of the AABB Transfusion Medicine Subsection Coordinating Committee. Hermelin has championed several of AABB’s social media initiatives, including the AABB Virtual Journal Club. In 2019, she received an AABB’s President’s Award for her work using social media to advance blood banking and transfusion medicine.

Katz began his career in medicine as an infectious disease specialist and, when HIV was recognized as an emergent issue for transfusion medicine, joined the Mississippi Valley Regional Blood Center as a consultant. (MVRBC changed its name to ImpactLife in May 2021.) He would go on to serve as the organization’s medical director and executive vice president. Katz also held roles as a hospital epidemiologist in Genesis Medical Center in Davenport, Iowa; medical director of the Scott County, Iowa, Health Department; and clinical professor of Infectious Diseases at University of Iowa Healthcare.

Throughout his career, Katz has been a pillar of the transfusion medicine and infectious diseases communities, serving as chief medical officer for America’s Blood Centers (ABC), an ABC past president, two-time past chair of AABB’s Transfusion Transmitted Diseases Committee, past chair of the Food and Drug Administration’s Blood Products Advisory Committee, and a member of the HHS Advisory Committee on Blood and Tissue Safety and Availability. He has authored or coauthored many abstracts, articles, and book chapters, was an associate editor of the 20th and 21st editions of the AABB Technical Manual and remains on the editorial board of Transfusion.