Editor’s note: The Bulletin is collaborating with the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Surgical Research Committee to present a series titled “Profiles in surgical research.” These interviews are published periodically and highlight prominent surgeon-scientist members of the ACS. Henri R. Ford, MD, MHA, FACS, FRCS, FAAP, is vice-president and chief of surgery at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, CA; and vice-dean of medical education and professor and vice-chair for clinical affairs, department of surgery, Keck School of Medicine, University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Dr. Ford’s research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation through the Injury Free Coalition for Kids, the National Trauma Registry for Children, and the American College of Surgeons (ACS).
Dr. Ford has served on the editorial boards of numerous professional publications and at present is an associate editor for the Journal of Pediatric Surgery and Pediatric Surgery International. He has served as Vice-Chair of the ACS Board of Governors and is an ACS Regent. Dr. Ford is past-president of the Association for Academic Surgery, the Surgical Infection Society, the Society of Black Academic Surgeons, and is the current president of the American Pediatric Surgical Association.
Angela M. Ingraham, MD, MS, FACS, assistant professor of surgery, University of Wisconsin, Madison, and the liaison between the ACS Surgical Research Committee and the Resident and Associate Society, interviewed Dr. Ford in November 2017. A summary of their discussion follows.
What aspects of your upbringing have influenced you as a surgeon and a researcher?
I was born in Haiti. My dad was a preacher; my mom was what I call a “prayer warrior.” We basically grew up in the church learning a lot of things, including the importance of faith in God and excelling at school.
Just before my 14th birthday, my family moved from Haiti to the U.S. It was a bit of a challenge because I didn’t really speak English, so it was quite an adjustment to go from Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to Brooklyn, NY. However, that really paled in comparison to the culture shock I would experience going from Brooklyn to Princeton University, NJ, which was exponentially more dramatic. Nonetheless, because of some of the guiding principles I had learned, as well as my parents’ teachings, I knew the importance of excelling in high school even though I didn’t speak English. I applied myself, did well, and got a full scholarship to Princeton. At Princeton, I was blessed to also do well and end up at Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA.
Who are some of the key people that have been critical to your success?
Along the way, there were always people who served as what I call mentors or perhaps even sponsors. In high school, a tough English teacher was one of my first supporters. In the 9th grade, every time I opened my mouth in English class, I was a source of ridicule from my classmates because I was butchering the English language. We were reading the novel, The Outsiders. Everyone would read a paragraph, and whenever it was my turn, everyone would just burst into laughter because they were anticipating all the mispronunciations. Mr. Stewart told me, “Don’t listen to them. Just keep trying.” That ongoing encouragement was really important to me.
I spent the following summer taking English and drama classes, which forced me to read and to do some public speaking. One instructor that summer was a young lady named Linda Colon. Linda was entering her junior year at Princeton. She told me about Princeton and suggested that I consider it for college. That summer program turned out to be extremely valuable because the following year I excelled in English sufficiently to be placed in honors English my junior and senior years.
My honors English teacher, Mrs. Levine, was really great. When I first arrived at John Jay High School as a freshman, the football players harassed me regularly; they grabbed my lunch tray, called me names such as “Frenchie,” yet I couldn’t respond. I couldn’t say anything or fight back because I didn’t speak English, and they were intimidating. During my junior year, I made a significant effort to assimilate, become integrated and accepted by this group, sometimes to my detriment. Mrs. Levine told me, “You have to be you; you have incredible talent and potential, and this is what you have to focus on.” She too became a sponsor. She was strict, but I think it was because she saw something in me that was worth supporting. She is largely responsible for pushing me to the point where I was going to be highly competitive for a place like Princeton. Science and math were never an issue for me, but because of her, I was really able to excel in English, social studies, and the humanities in general. She turned me into a much stronger high school student.
Fast-forward to Princeton: there again, I found a series of role models and mentors whom I wanted to emulate and who were instrumental in building the confidence necessary for me to excel in a place like Princeton. One source of inspiration was Randall Kennedy, JD, who was a senior when I was a freshman and is now a professor of law at Harvard. He won the Moses Taylor Pyne Honor Prize, the highest honor bestowed on a Princeton undergraduate, and then he became a Rhodes Scholar. I was inspired by his accomplishments, and he motivated me to excel.
Another key individual was Gary Gibbons, MD, now the director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Gary was a pre-med junior who took me under his wing and basically taught me what it takes to succeed, namely that you have to work hard and that you have to apply yourself in order to reach your goals.
What were some of the critical moments in medical school and residency that prompted you to pursue surgery and academic research?
I followed Gary to Harvard, where he continued to be a source of guidance and inspiration because he seemed to know exactly what to do. I went to Harvard with few aspirations. I didn’t really know anything about academic medicine per se. I remember the first week during orientation, several classmates introduced themselves, and one of them said, “I’m going to become a plastic surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital;” another one said, “I’m going to become the dean of the medical school;” and I said, “I must be in the wrong place. I just want to graduate so I can become a doctor.” That attitude was to change soon enough.
I didn’t have any preconceived notion as to what I wanted to do when I started medical school, and by the time I became a third-year medical student, I thought I was going to pursue every clinical rotation that I did; that is, until I found my passion.
It was toward the end of my third year, and my life was all set. In July, I was going to take a year off, go to the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and get a master’s degree in public policy, and then apply for residency in internal medicine; but then, I fell in love with surgery. This story leads me to my next major sponsor or mentor at Harvard, Richard “Dick” Wilson, MD, FACS, chief of the division of surgical oncology at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston. I really liked surgery. I was all jazzed up to get up at 4:30 am to make rounds. One day, we finished an 8- or 10-hour case, an esophagectomy, and I’m waiting at 10:00 pm to catch the elevator to go to my fiancée’s place for a late dinner, and who walks over—Dr. Wilson. This messenger of God comes over and says, “Henri, have you considered going into general surgery? I think you would have a brilliant career in academic surgery.” Just imagine Moses parting the waters or the voice of God from on high saying, “Behold….” That’s really how it felt. I found the answer I was seeking, and, honestly, I never looked back. This was what I had been waiting for, this guidance. It was unequivocally the correct answer, and Dick Wilson became my advisor and helped me craft my path in surgery. He may be largely responsible for where I am today.
