News
Women's History Month: A Message from Irene Kim, MD, Community Engagement Officer
In honor of Women’s History Month, the ASTS celebrates the contributions of several pioneering women in the field of transplant surgery. Dr. Olga Jonasson performed the first kidney transplant in the state of Illinois in 1969 after her clinical fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital. She won a grant from the NIH to study tissue typing in kidney transplant recipients and established a tissue typing lab for 6 transplant centers in the Chicago area. Dr. Jonasson was appointed Chief of Surgery at Cook County Hospital in 1977 and the Robert M. Zollinger Professor of Surgery at the Ohio State University in 1987, the first woman to lead a clinical and academic department of surgery in the United States.
Dr. Nancy Ascher was the first woman to perform a liver transplant and went on to build the transplant program at UCSF, where she was the first female Chair of the Department of Surgery from 1999-2016. She has shaped transplant surgery through her leadership as President of the ASTS, service on the Presidential Task Force on Organ Transplantation, the Surgeon General’s Task Force on Increasing Donor Organs, and many additional leadership roles. Other notable female leaders include ASTS past presidents Dr. Kim Olthoff, Dr. Elizabeth Pomfret and Dr. Ginny Bumgardner who have paved the way for women in the field. Thanks to these inspiring leaders and many others, 20% of transplant surgery fellowship applicants are women today.
While progress has been made, women remain underrepresented in transplant surgery. We celebrate the women and allies in our field whose leadership and mentorship continue to inspire the next generation.
