Dr. Joseph V. Sakran is a trauma surgeon, coalition builder, policy advisor, public health expert, and nationally recognized advocate for gun violence prevention. He is currently Director of Emergency General Surgery, Associate Professor of Surgery, and Associate Chief of the Division of Acute Care Surgery at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.

A survivor of gun violence himself, Dr. Sakran’s interest in medicine and trauma surgery began after a stray bullet nearly killed him during his senior year of high school. He has subsequently dedicated his life to treating the most vulnerable, reducing health disparities among marginalized populations, and advancing public policy that alleviates structural violence in low-income communities.

In addition to being an active clinician, Dr. Sakran is widely known for building diverse coalitions and advocacy efforts within public health and policy communities. Following a 2018 comment by the National Rifle Association that doctors should “stay in our lane” with regard to gun violence prevention, Sakran launched This is Our Lane, a community of medical professionals dedicated to reducing firearm injuries and deaths.

Internationally, Dr. Sakran has delivered care and sustainable solutions throughout numerous countries in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, with a focus on long-term interventions and capacity building that reduce the global burden of surgical disease. He has responded to a number of international disasters including the Asian Tsunami in 2004, and the Haitian Earthquake in 2010.

Dr. Sakran has been recognized for his public health expertise, specifically on firearm injury prevention. In 2019, he was named a Presidential Leadership Scholar in which he furthered his research on safe gun storage. Selected by the National Academy of Medicine to be a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Fellow, he was honored to serve in the U.S. Senate in the office of New Hampshire Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, where he worked on health policy and regulatory issues from 2019-2020.

Dr. Sakran makes frequent appearances in print and on television. He has written numerous opinion pieces for The Atlantic and CNN.com, and his work has been featured on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, MSNBC, CNN, The Israeli Times, O Magazine. He has also testified multiple times in front of Congress on gun violence prevention.

Dr. Sakran is a first-generation Arab-American, has lived and worked throughout the United States, Israel, Africa, and India, and speaks Arabic and Hebrew.