“I remember him giving grand rounds as a surgical resident. “One thing about Brian is that he’s very humble,” Kathianne said. Boston is also where he met his wife, Kathianne Sellers Williams. Williams did his internship and residency in Boston at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “I enjoyed operating and the fast pace of the ICU, including the adrenaline.” “The pace of the specialty, patients coming in the door near death and the team bringing them back - trauma surgeons seemed like my kind of people,” Williams said. On the second day of his trauma rotation, Williams said, he knew that’s what he wanted to do with his life. I was exposed to these folks talking about their day-to-day all the time, and I thought their jobs sounded great.”Īt 28, he started medical school at the University of South Florida, where he did rotations in trauma surgery and surgical critical care. “My social circle was all nurses and doctors. “While on active duty, I got this bug to go into medicine,” Williams said. Williams, an Air Force brat, moved around every few years as a child and eventually became an aeronautical engineer after attending the Air Force Academy as the first person in his family to go to college. He replied simply, “I didn’t want to get shot.” From engineering to medicine Brian Williams, MD, studied aeronautical engineering at the Air Force Academy. His wife, who is white and was not yet aware of the rampant racism that would later come to light in the media, was surprised he complied. One day as Williams waited for a car to the airport outside of his apartment in Dallas, someone called the police on a “suspicious Black male.” Officers approached him, asking for identification to prove his residence. He and his wife even learned that adopting a baby of color was less expensive than adopting a child who is white. People asking him outside of a restaurant to park their cars or mistaking him for janitorial staff in the hospital. While that tragic and traumatic moment in Dallas looms large for him as a trauma surgeon, Williams is further defined and motivated by the racism he has experienced his whole life, in and out of the workplace. What if I could teach what I know to a bunch of public policy grad students with no end goal other than to say here’s my experience, you’re all smart folks going into public policy - you’re looking at this outside of a healthcare lens and can help find some really creative solutions.” Policy can affect the lives of millions of people per year. “When public policy becomes weaponized,” he said, “people suffer. This spring, he’s teaching a course in the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy related to violence and communities of color. Today he continues his work as a trauma surgeon at the University of Chicago Medicine - and his work to tackle the toll gun violence and now COVID-19 are taking on the Black community.
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He worked full time as the medical director of a community health institute to address healthcare disparities within Dallas County, and the mayor appointed him chair of the Dallas Community Police Oversight Board. That night and its aftermath led Williams to put down his scalpel for two years to work on police-community relations in Dallas and catapulted him to prominence as a national thought leader on public health and racism. It was a perceptible shift in me personally and professionally.” I had not cried in so long before that, but that night I was crying. “After talking to the families, I went to a back room and fell to the ground and started bawling,” he recalled. This is my job.”Īfter working through the night to save the officers’ lives, Williams had to break the news to three families that their loved ones did not survive. “It was a medical crisis, and I’m a trauma surgeon.
“At the time of the crisis, I wasn’t giving any thought to the external social political climate,” Williams said. Williams was the attending on call that night and the only Black trauma surgeon on a team of 12. Seven of the wounded officers were transported to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. That night, during a protest against police shootings, a man ambushed and shot at a group of police officers, killing five and injuring nine others. Ask Brian Williams, MD, to identify his defining moment as a trauma surgeon, and, without skipping a beat, he will tell you about what happened in Texas on July 7, 2016.
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