The Department of Medicine is delighted to welcome Douglas R. Morgan, M.D., MPH, as our next Director of the Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, effective October 1. A global expert in the epidemiology and prevention of gastric cancer, Dr. Morgan is currently Associate Professor of Medicine at Vanderbilt University. He will lead the Division in expanding its clinical, educational, and research programs to meet the needs of Alabama and to advance prevention and treatment of GI diseases globally. 

An alumnus of Dartmouth College, Dr. Morgan served as a Peace Corps engineer in Central America. He graduated from Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, where he was a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society and recipient of the Ivan E. Shalit Prize for Clinical Excellence. Dr. Morgan trained in Internal Medicine and Gastroenterology at the University of California, San Francisco, where he received the Intern of the Year Award. He earned a master's in epidemiology in 1996 from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Public Health. 

In 15 years on the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), Dr. Morgan led the development UNC’s capsule endoscopy and enteroscopy programs and founded UNC’s Center for Latino Health, for which he received the Ohtli Award, the highest honor awarded by the Government of Mexico to a foreign national.

In 2011, he joined the faculty at Vanderbilt, where he is esteemed as a respected attending physician and mentor. He has led Latin American programs for the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health and the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center. He directs or co-directs NIH-funded programs in the etiology and chemoprevention of gastric cancer in Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Columbia, and Puerto Rico. 

His 2013 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association demonstrated the potential efficacy of eradication of Helicobacter pylori infection for gastric cancer prevention in Latin American communities. The global health initiatives in Central America have provided an outstanding platform for clinical and research rotations for trainees in the health sciences.  

Dr. Morgan will serve as the Division’s fourth Director, succeeding Mel Wilcox, M.D., MSPH, and his predecessors Charles O. Elson, M.D., (1989-2001) a renowned mucosal immunologist who defined microbial contributors to inflammatory bowel disease, and founding Division Director and inventor of the endoscope Basil I. Hirschowitz, M.D. (1959 to 1989).