Dr. Kenneth S. Azarow currently is the Division Chief of Pediatric Surgery, OHSU and Surgeon-in-Chief of Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Portland, Oregon.
Dr. Azarow received his B.S. in at Franklin and Marshall and received his M.A. at Hahnemann University. He earned his M.D. in 1987 from the F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD. After completing his medical degree in 1987, Dr. Azarow completed his General Surgery residency training at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. He then served a two-year operational tour as a General Surgeon at Fort Hood, Texas, prior to a two-year fellowship in Pediatric Surgery at the University of Toronto. He next went to Madigan Army Medical Center where within a year Dr. Azarow became Associate Program Director and started a surgical laboratory for the institution. Within two years Dr. Azarow became the General Surgery Residency Director, and was appointed as the Chair of a new committee on simulation. As General Surgery Program Director from 2000-2006, he graduated 17 Chief Residents from the program and it was one of 11 programs in the nation with a 100% first-time board pass rate.
In 2003, Dr. Azarow was promoted to Professor of Surgery at Uniformed Services University and at that time also became Chief of Surgery at Madigan Army Medical Center. In December 2005 Dr. Azarow was awarded the Lewis Aspey Malogne Award for Academic Excellence as the Outstanding Physician in the entire Army. Upon retirement from the Army, Dr. Azarow was recruited to the University of Nebraska School of Medicine to develop and initiate a Fellowship in Pediatric Surgery at Children’s Hospital and Medical Center, Omaha. At that time he was also named the Alton S.K. Wong Distinguished Professor of Surgery. During his tenure at in Omaha he held two Vice Chair positions within the Department of Surgery; initially Vice Chair for Education, and most recently Vice Chair for Academic Affairs. Finally, in 2012 Dr. Azarow was elected as a Director of the American Board of Surgery. This position also placed him on the Pediatric Surgery Board and he will ascend to be the Chair of that body in 2015. He remains extremely busy both clinically and academically, and in addition to belonging to several national surgical societies including the prestigious American Surgical Association, he has 66 peer-reviewed publications, 23 book chapters, and 1 guest editor to a volume dedicated to Pediatric Surgery to his credit.