April 3, 2015: Robert Higgins Appointed as Director of the Department of Surgery

To the Johns Hopkins Medicine community

Dear Colleagues,

We are delighted to announce that Robert S.D. Higgins will join Johns Hopkins Medicine as the William Stewart Halsted Professor of Surgery, director of the Department of Surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and surgeon-in-chief of The Johns Hopkins Hospital. He will assume these positions on July 1.

Dr. Higgins is a world-renowned surgeon with expertise in heart and lung transplantation, mechanical circulatory support, and outcome assessments for heart failure and cardiac surgery patients. He is currently professor and chairman of the Department of Surgery, surgeon-in-chief, director of the Comprehensive Transplant Center, and the John H. and Mildred C. Lumley Medical Research Chair at Wexner Medical Center at The Ohio State University in Columbus. His extraordinary ability to integrate teams across disciplines in medicine and surgery will surely serve the people of Johns Hopkins well, along will his clear talents as a health system leader.

In addition to exhibiting consistently excellent leadership, Dr. Higgins is an equally adept educator, researcher and administrator. Prior to his current position, he served as professor and chief of the Division of Cardiac Surgery at The Ohio State University. He was also director of the Thoracic Surgery Residency Program in the Department of Cardiovascular-Thoracic Surgery at Rush Medical College in Chicago. The first lung transplant in southeast Michigan was performed under his guidance as the senior staff surgeon and surgical director of thoracic organ transplantation at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. Dr. Higgins also created a Medicare-approved lung transplant program and a pediatric heart transplant program in collaboration with the Children's Hospital of Michigan.

Having published extensively in his field, he is a frequent speaker nationally and abroad. He has held leadership positions at various organizations, including the Advisory Committee on Organ Transplantation, the American Board of Thoracic Surgery, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, the United Network for Organ Sharing and the Society of Black Academic Surgeons, among others. He assumed additional educational roles as the program director for the Ohio State University thoracic surgery residency program and as a member of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education's Residency Review Committee for Thoracic Surgery, an elected group that oversees and accredits all thoracic surgery programs in the U.S.

Dr. Higgins earned his medical degree at the Yale School of Medicine and a master's degree in health administration at Virginia Commonwealth University. He completed his residency in general surgery and served as chief resident at the University Hospitals of Pittsburgh. He was a Winchester Scholar and fellow in cardiothoracic surgery at the Yale School of Medicine, and he also served as a senior registrar in transplantation at Papworth Hospital in the U.K.

We would like to thank Jonathan Efron for so ably leading the Department of Surgery as interim director for the past year. We also appreciate the diligence of the search committee, co-chaired by Janice Clements, vice dean for faculty, and Alan Partin, director of the Department of Urology, who conducted a nationwide search before enthusiastically and unanimously recommending Dr. Higgins.

Dr. Higgins will be a wonderful addition to The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Johns Hopkins Medicine. We are honored that he has accepted this post, and we know that he will lead our Department of Surgery to great heights as it continues to provide the best possible care to our patients. Please join us in welcoming Dr. Higgins and his family to Baltimore and Johns Hopkins in July.

Sincerely,

Paul B. Rothman, M.D.
Dean of the Medical Faculty
CEO, Johns Hopkins Medicine

Ronald R. Peterson
President
The Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System
EVP, Johns Hopkins Medicine