Tanya Zakrison, MD, MPH, FACS, FRCSC

Dr. Tanya Zakrison is a Principal Investigator of the “Harmonizing Hospital-Based Violence Intervention Programs with a Novel Medical-Legal Partnership for Equity in the Social and Structural Determinants of Health” project at University of Chicago. She is a member of the 1. Steering Committee, 2. Community Engagement Workgroup, 3. Data & Methods Workgroup, 4. Policy, Implementation and Evaluation Workgroup, and 5. Communication and Dissemination Workgroup.

Dr. Tanya L. Zakrison is a Professor of Surgery and is a member of the Section of Trauma & Acute Care Surgery at the University of Chicago. Located on the South Side of Chicago, the University of Chicago Medicine is designated as a Level 1 Adult Trauma Center, with a 40% rate of penetrating trauma with firearm injuries representing our most frequent mechanism of injury. Dr. Zakrison is a highly-skilled surgeon specializing in trauma surgery, emergency general surgery and surgical critical care. She is the Principal Investigator and Program Co-Director of Recovery Legal Care, a novel Medical Legal Partnership in association with our Violence Recovery Program at our University of Chicago Medicine Level I Trauma Center. She is the Director of Critical Trauma Research, which uses mixed methodologies to explore the connection between intentional, interpersonal trauma, racial capitalism, power, privilege, and intersectional oppression. Her current research interests have focused on the role of structural violence in firearm injury, the connection between bidirectional intimate partner violence and community-level violence, the use of crime victim compensation for structural reparations, creating structural justice curricula in surgery and sickle-cell trait in trauma. As founding co-chair of the Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma’s Committee on Equity, Quality and Inclusion in Trauma Surgery Practice, Dr. Zakrison has helped to create evidence-based position statements on structural racism, “Stand-Your Ground” laws, and workplace discrimination. Dr. Zakrison is founding lead of our community-academy group PRAXIS – Practicing Radical Action by eXpanding Inclusive Societies. After establishing one of the first Medical-Legal Partnerships in trauma, Dr. Zakrison is exploring the link between firearm injury and homicide, and the structural determinants of health.