Ben L. Zarzaur Jr., MD, MPH, FACS

Professor

• Endowed Chair, Sylvia and Royal Lichtfeldt Burn Center Professorship
• Division Chair of Acute Care and Regional General Surgery
• Interim Director, WiSOR

Dr. Zarzaur was born and raised in Birmingham, Alabama and attended Spring Hill College in Mobile where he graduated Magna Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology. He went on to medical school at The University of Alabama School of Medicine.

Following medical school, Dr. Zarzaur completed residency training in General Surgery at The University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis. During his residency, Dr. Zarzaur spent two years exploring how the mucosal immune system is influenced by different types of nutrition support under the guidance of his mentor, Dr. Kenneth Kudsk.

After residency, Dr. Zarzaur completed a Surgical Critical Care fellowship at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.  He stayed in Chapel Hill where he accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery at UNC. While there, Dr. Zarzaur earned a Masters of Public Health in Epidemiology from the School of Public Health at UNC-Chapel Hill.

In 2006 he moved back to Memphis and became an Associate Professor of Surgery at The University of Tennessee Health Science Center. Dr. Zarzaur received a K23 Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health to study the role of socio-economic disparities in quality of life and functional ability after injury. Dr. Zarzaur has also been the Principle Investigator of an 11 site multi-institutional study funded by the National Trauma Institute to determine long-term outcomes after blunt spleen injury in adults.

In 2014, he was recruited to Indiana University School of Medicine as the Founder and Director of the Center for Outcomes Research in the Department of Surgery. While at there, he served as the Vice-Chair of Clinical Research as well as the Chief of Surgery and Trauma Medical Director at Eskenazi Health.

Dr. Zarzaur joined the faculty in the Department of Surgery at the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health in 2019. Currently, Dr. Zarzaur is funded by the National Institutes of Health to study the effectiveness of collaborative care interventions at improving long-term outcomes in older injured patients.

In addition to his research interests, Dr. Zarzaur has also served as a member and leader in many local, regional and national trauma organizations. He has served as the Chair of the Tennessee Committee on Trauma as well as the Chair of the Trauma Care Advisory Council. He was a member of the Indiana Department of Health Trauma Advisory Council. Currently, he is a member of the National Committee on Trauma.  While in Memphis, Dr. Zarzaur was a medical team manager for an Urban Search and Rescue Team and has been deployed as part of disaster response.