Nearly 4 decades ago, in the summer of 1985, Mary T. Hawn, MD, MPH, FACS, mounted a stage at the American Gastroenterological Association annual meeting. Then a University of Michigan undergraduate, Dr. Hawn had been working in the research laboratory of Tadataka Yamada, MD, KBE, a renowned gastroenterologist. She’d completed her own research in gastric acid secretion and had been selected to present at the conference.
“At the age of 20, I delivered my first scientific presentation in front of more than 1,000 people,” she later said, adding that Dr. Yamada helped ensure her session would go smoothly.
During Convocation at Clinical Congress on Saturday, October 19, she will add another appearance on a stage to the many in her eventful career—this time to receive the 2024 Wangensteen Scientific Forum Award, an honor given by the ACS Scientific Forum Committee to a surgeon who exemplifies research, educational, and clinical achievements.
Dr. Hawn is the Emile Holman Professor of Surgery and Chair of the Department of Surgery at Stanford University in California.
Education and Career
Dr. Hawn earned her medical degree at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she won the C. Gardner Child Award for Excellence in General Surgery. She was a general surgery intern, resident, and research fellow in colorectal tumor genetics at the University of Michigan, including a final year as administrative chief resident. She earned a masters degree in public health from the same institution, then completed a minimally invasive surgical fellowship at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland.
Dr. Hawn returned to Ann Arbor for roles as an assistant professor in general surgery at the University of Michigan Medical School and a staff surgeon at the Veterans Affairs (VA) Ann Arbor Health Care. After serving in these roles, she spent 15 years at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she rose from assistant professor to chief of the section of gastrointestinal surgery in the Department of Surgery. She was simultaneously a staff surgeon and director of the Center for Surgical, Medical Acute Care Research and Transitions Research Enhancement Award Program at the VA Birmingham Health Care. While in Birmingham, she attained a certificate in healthcare quality and safety from the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Health Professions and became the vice-chair for quality and clinical effectiveness in the Department of Surgery, before moving to her current position at Stanford in 2015.
Measuring and Improving Surgical Quality
Dr. Hawn has connected her academic leadership with prolific scientific research throughout her career. In her clinical area of expertise, minimally invasive foregut surgery, she has maintained long-running funding. Her output helped improve guidelines for noncardiac surgery in patients with coronary stents.
In addition, Dr. Hawn extensively has researched surgical quality measurement and national policy affecting surgical populations, including a comprehensive evaluation of the Surgical Care Improvement Project implementation using national VA data. Her work has informed policy about national surgical quality measurement. She views her work with a sense of urgency; in a biographic statement, she wrote, “Defining robust metrics of surgical quality that are actionable and can lead to sustained improvement in our field is of utmost importance.”
With expertise in creating risk prediction modeling for surgical patients and defining limitations of such models, Dr. Hawn’s current work includes a study examining the confluence of surgery, surgical patients, patient comorbidities, and anesthesia on outcomes. An additional study she is involved with is “leveraging black box data and looking at dynamic quality metrics on team performance between anesthesia, surgery, and nursing,” she said.
Leadership and Legacy
The current president of the Society of Surgical Chairs, Dr. Hawn is also a past-chair of the American Board of Surgery and has held leadership positions within numerous surgical organizations. At the ACS, she has served as President of the Alabama Chapter and as a member of the Board of Governors, as well as a past member of the Scientific Forum Committee.
Her work embodies the spirit of Owen Wangensteen, MD, PhD, FACS (1898–1981), a surgeon-scientist and ACS Past-President (1959–1960). Dr. Wangensteen, who spent his career at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, was instrumental to advancing transplant surgery. He also founded the Surgical Forum in 1940, today known as the Scientific Forum, to encourage surgeons to publish and present scientific research, promoting a culture of research that now defines the epitome of achievement in the surgical field.
Asked what she wanted her own legacy to be, Dr. Hawn gave an answer that seemed to reach back to the undergraduate she once was: “What I want my legacy to be is to inspire those who don’t think they can accomplish things that defy their limits. If you work hard and dedicate yourself to the right things, I think there are opportunities for everybody. I feel like I’ve accomplished way beyond my wildest dreams.”
