Michael Zinner: Leads Miami Cancer Institute into research work with FIU

Dr. Michael J. Zinner was hired in 2016 to lead as CEO and executive medical director Baptist Health South Florida’s Miami Cancer Institute, a leader in personalized clinical treatments of all types of cancer that was recently recognized as one of the top 10% high-performing cancer centers in the nation.

Dr. Zinner, born, raised and educated in Florida, went on to lead the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a joint organization between the Dana-Farber Brigham Cancer Institute and the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, from 1994 to 2016.

He is a past president of the Association for Academic Surgery and the Society of University Surgeons. He has served as director of the American Board of Surgery, and as member of the board of directors of the Society of Surgery of the Alimentary Track and the Collegium Internationale Chirurgiac Digestivae in Rome. He is also the past chairman of the board of regents of the American College of Surgeons and the current vice chairman of the American Surgical Association.

In 2004, he established the Center for Surgery and Public Health with Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, which focused on healthcare and the quality, safety and effectiveness of global surgical care.

Dr. Zinner’s area of medical focus is surgical oncology and diseases of the gastrointestinal tract.

His goal he said, is to advance the Miami Cancer Institute into a nationally recognized cancer institution as Baptist Health System is partnering with Florida International University to train future physicians and healthcare researchers. He plans to bring into the institute world-class technology for the advancement of cancer treatment.

Medicine, he said, “is the noblest profession that I know. If you want to go into it to help mankind, you picked the right profession.”

Dr. Zinner spoke with Miami Today reporter Monica Correa.

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