Author Bio
Doctor and Senator Bill Frist is both a nationally recognized heart and lung transplant surgeon and former U.S. Senate Majority Leader. Currently Professor of Business and Medicine at Vanderbilt University, he is consistently recognized among the most influential leaders in American healthcare and is one of only two individuals to rank in the top ten of each of the five inaugural Modern Healthcare Magazine annual surveys of the most powerful people in healthcare in the United States.
A graduate of Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Harvard Medical School, Dr. Frist founded and directed the Vanderbilt Multi-Organ Transplant Center, performing over 150 heart and lung transplants and authoring over 100 peer-reviewed medical articles, over 400 newspaper articles and seven books on topics such as bioterrorism and transplantation. He is board certified in both general and heart surgery.
Dr. Frist represented Tennessee in the U.S. Senate for 12 years; he was elected Majority Leader of the Senate, having served fewer total years in Congress than any person chosen to lead that body in history.
Today, he is focused on domestic health reform, the basic science of heart transplantation, global health policy, economic development in low-income countries, health care disparities, medical mission work in Sudan, genocide in Darfur, the health of the mountain gorilla, and HIV/AIDS.
Dr. Frist annually leads medical mission trips to Africa. Frist is chair of Save the Children’s “Survive to Five Campaign.” His current board service includes the Kaiser Family Foundation, Millennium Challenge Corporation, Africare, the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s Committee on Conscience, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Harvard Medical School Board of Fellows, the Mountain Gorilla Veterinary Project and Hope Through Healing Hands.
Senator Frist is married and has three sons.