Earl Best, MD

Dr. Earl Best is a native from the Dutch Caribbean Island Curaçao and received his MD from Leiden State University in the Netherlands in 1984 after which he specialized in Sports Medicine at the University Medical Centre Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

At the UMC in Amsterdam he was one of the faculty members teaching Exercise Physiology to students studying Human Movement Sciences. 
From 1990 to 2011 he worked as a sports-physician in the Netherlands and Curaçao. During these years he was the chief medical officer on the Olympic Committee for the former Netherlands Antilles, the sports-physician for various national teams and on the medical board of some international sport federations. 

Aside from his private sports-medicine practice, Dr. Best also showed great interest and worked in the field of Public Health Policy and Management, Emergency Care, Disaster Management and in Aviation and Maritime Medicine. He has participated in various Public Health projects and has been an advisor to the government of Curaçao for 11 years. He served as the medical director for the national EMS service and as a BLS, ACLS and PHTLS instructor for 10 years. 

In 1998 he became a technical consultant in disaster management and medicine. He was selected as an Incident Command System (ICS) and Mass Casualty Management (MCM) instructor for the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) providing courses and training to countries in the Caribbean basin and a member of a PAHO Rapid Deployment Team. He was one of the founding members of the PAHO Disaster Mitigation and Advisory Group (DiMAG) which developed the Safe Hospitals program and provides support in vulnerability reduction and damage assessment in the health sector in the Caribbean and the Americas. 

He has been an aviation and maritime medical examiner for 20 years. His love for and dedication to aviation led to teaching the module “Human Factors in Aviation” as part of the pilot and air traffic control educational program and to become a member of the exam committee. He also served as a member on the aircraft accident and incident investigation board.

A field he acquired quite extensive knowledge and experience in, is Quality Management. From 2001 till 2008 he worked as a lead auditor in ISO 9001 and QA manager in health care. He assisted various health care institutions in getting ISO 9001 certified.

Before joining AUC’s Clinical Sciences faculty in May 2022, Dr. Best held the position of Inspector General for Public Health in Sint Maarten. Since 2011 he headed the Inspectorate for Public Health with the primary task of supervision and enforcement in the health care and pharmaceutical sector. His objective as Inspector General was to ensure safety and quality in health care during routine operations, after a medical calamity and when disaster strikes.

In April 2014 he successfully established a formal collaboration platform between AUC and the Ministry of Public Health, Social Development and Labor of Sint Maarten with the aim to address public health needs of Sint Maarten and other projects of mutual interest, while simultaneously enhancing the education of the AUC medical students. He was awarded the AUC Executive Dean Transformational Award in May 2015 for this initiative.

Publications

• Learners-as-educators: Education through comprehensive community outreach clinics Naira Chobanyan et al, PUBLISHED 26 OCT 2023 (https://doi.org/10.21955/mep.1115401.1)
• Hazard Mapping to Support Mass Casualty Response plan on the isolated island of Sint Maarten, INMED 2022 Humanitarian Health Conference poster presentation
• Evaluation of Environmental Risk Factors for Type 2 Diabetes in Sint Maarten, Chobanyan et al. J Environ Anal Toxicol 2016

Training

• Chief Medical Officer National Olympic Committee
• Medical Director EMS
• ERC ACLS Course Director
• Disaster management Consultant PAHO
• Aviation Medical Examiner
• Inspector General Public Health