Renowned vascular surgeon Anton N. Sidawy, MD, MPH, FACS, was elected President-Elect of the ACS during the Annual Business Meeting of Members at Clinical Congress 2024 in San Francisco, California. The First Vice-President-Elect and Second Vice-President-Elect also were announced.
Dr. Sidawy, who is the Lewis B. Saltz Chair of Surgery and professor of surgery at The George Washington University (GW) School of Medicine and Health Sciences in Washington, DC, said the appointment, “fills me with pride and the satisfaction that others see me as a passionate servant leader and consensus builder.”
A native of Syria, Dr. Sidawy immigrated to the US at age 25 after earning his medical degree at the Aleppo University School of Medicine in Syria. He completed his general surgery residency, including a year as administrative chief resident at the Washington Hospital Center in Washington, DC, as well as a fellowship in vascular surgery at Boston University Hospital in Massachusetts. He later earned a master’s degree in public health from GW.
An ACS Fellow since 1987, Dr. Sidawy has served as a member of the ACS Board of Governors (2001–2007) and Board of Regents (2015–2024). The latter role included a year as Chair of the Board of Regents (2021–2022). He also led a joint effort by the ACS and the Society for Vascular Surgery (SVS) to create the Vascular Verification Program, an ACS Quality Program that provides hospitals with critical oversight of their vascular surgery programs.
For his longstanding excellence in surgery and surgical leadership, Dr. Sidawy was awarded a 2020 Presidential Citation Award from SVS and the 2006 LaSalle D. Leffall Jr., Award from the Metropolitan Washington DC Chapter of the ACS. He also is the namesake of the Anton N. Sidawy Lectureship of that chapter, which was established in 2008.
A firm proponent of the ACS motto “To Heal All with Skill and Trust,” Dr. Sidawy said that he expects his year as ACS President to be focused on “working to the benefit of our Fellows and surgical patients and improving the practice environment and the quality of surgical care for all in the community at large.”
Vice-Presidents-Elect
Anne Mosenthal, MD, FACS, a trauma surgeon who is the chief academic officer at Beth Israel Lahey Health—Lahey Hospital & Medical Center in Burlington, Massachusetts, is the First Vice-President-Elect. Dr. Mosenthal has pioneered work to advance palliative care into surgical practice and is a founding member, past Vice-Chair, and current Chair of the ACS Committee on Surgical Palliative Care. She also has held leadership roles in the ACS Trauma Quality Improvement Program, through which she has developed best practice guidelines for palliative care in trauma settings.
Edward M. Barksdale Jr., MD, FACS, chief surgical officer at the Chicagoland Children’s Health Alliance and a professor of surgery at The University of Chicago, both in Chicago, Illinois, is the Second Vice-President-Elect. He has contributed to many ACS committees for more than 2 decades, including most recently as a consultant to the Committee on Interprofessional Education and Practice. An expert in childhood cancer and chronic intestinal disease, Dr. Barksdale also worked closely with the mayor, chief of police, and other officials in Cleveland and throughout Ohio on successful antiviolence initiatives while serving as surgeon-in-chief at Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital/University Hospitals in Cleveland, Ohio.
Both Drs. Mosenthal and Barksdale will serve alongside Dr. Sidawy as officers-elect until October 2025, when they will assume roles as First Vice-President and Second Vice-President, and Dr. Sidawy becomes ACS President.
