MSIH alumnus, Dr. Joseph Sakran, is a trauma surgeon and Director of Emergency General Surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.

His story was told in People Magazine following the tragic October shootings in Las Vegas that killed 58 concert-goers. (Since first publication of this post, Joe’s story has also appeared in ScienceNews.)

Joe, himself, is a victim of gun violence. He survived being shot in the neck during a football game when he was 17 years old. After his recovery, he swore to become a doctor and work tirelessly to save people from a similar experience.

Since graduating from MSIH in 2005, and completing residency at Inova Fairfax Hospital, Virginia, Joe began his quest for gun control and violence reduction in the streets of America. Among other things, he founded Doctors For Hillary — “a grassroots movement … (in which he) travels across the country advocating for expanding universal background checks, closing loopholes that allow people with criminal records to acquire guns and increasing federal funding for firearm-related research.”

Joe Sakran also holds an MPH from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Because of the expertise in Global Health he gained while studying at MSIH, during his residency at Inova Fairfax, he was sent as part of their team of trauma surgeons to Haiti less than a week after the 2010 earthquake.