Bio
Joseph (Joe) D. Forrester, MD, MSc, is an Associate Professor of Surgery at Stanford Medicine and a senior physician–executive at Stanford Health Care, where he serves as Trauma Medical Director, Associate Chair of Clinical Affairs for the Department of Surgery, and Physician Improvement Leader. In these roles, he is responsible for clinical quality, safety, operational performance, and system-level improvement across a high-acuity, tertiary academic health system.
Dr. Forrester leads enterprise efforts to optimize trauma and acute care delivery, overseeing quality assurance, performance improvement, and interdisciplinary care pathways that consistently exceed national benchmarks. His work focuses on translating data into operational change—aligning frontline clinical teams, service-line leadership, and executive priorities to improve outcomes, efficiency, and reliability of care. He also serves as Medical Director of the Stanford Chest Wall Injury Center, a multidisciplinary program he helped design and scale as a model for complex care coordination.
Prior to joining Stanford Medicine, Dr. Forrester was an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), where he worked in the Division of Vector-Borne Diseases and participated in domestic and international outbreak response, including the West African Ebola epidemic. This experience shaped his approach to systems leadership, risk management, and data-driven decision-making in high-consequence environments. He was recognized by the CDC for excellence in international, occupational, and environmental health.
Dr. Forrester is an extramurally funded investigator whose scholarly work informs health-system strategy in trauma care, surgical quality, infection prevention, and perioperative operations. He has led first-in-human and randomized clinical trials, quality-improvement initiatives, and predictive analytics programs, and has authored more than 160 peer-reviewed publications in leading surgical and medical journals. His research emphasis is on pragmatic, scalable solutions that improve patient outcomes while reducing variation and inefficiency.
A nationally sought-after speaker and advisor, Dr. Forrester regularly presents to health-system leaders, professional societies, and multidisciplinary teams on trauma system performance, clinical operations, and quality transformation. He holds leadership roles in multiple national organizations and is deeply committed to mentoring physicians and trainees in leadership, improvement science, and academic development.
