Robert Higgins, M.D.
Director, Department of Surgery
Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine
Speaking at the 35th annual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration is Robert Higgins, director of the Department of Surgery for the school of medicine. He is the hospital’s first African-American department head.
Higgins, a cardiothoracic and heart-lung transplant surgeon, says he chose medicine as a career to finish the work of his late father, Robert Higgins Sr., a family practitioner in Charleston, South Carolina, who died from injuries sustained in a car accident when the younger Higgins was 5.
A former president of the Society of Black Academic Surgeons and the Association of Black Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgeons, he is nationally known for his advocacy on behalf of building a physician workforce that mirrors the country’s racial and ethnic diversity.
Shortly after he arrived in Baltimore, Higgins also
established an endowed memorial lectureship in honor of Levi Watkins Jr., the first African-American chief resident in cardiac surgery at Johns Hopkins and founder of the Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration.
