Ronald M Stewart, M.D.

Ronald M. Stewart completed medical school (1985) and surgical residency at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (1991). He then completed a Trauma and Surgical Critical Care Fellowship at the University of Tennessee in Memphis, returning to San Antonio in 1993. Since that time, he and his team have worked to develop the University Health trauma program. He serves as the Chair of the Department of Surgery at UT Health San Antonio, University Health, and the Advisory Committee of the University of Texas System’s Trauma Research and Combat Casualty Care Collaborative (TRC4). 

Since 1996 he has served as the Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council (STRAC) Board Chair. STRAC serves a 27,000 square mile area of Southwest Texas. Over this time, he and the STRAC team have led the development of an integrated civilian-military trauma system, the STRAC Regional Medical Operations Center as the foundation for a regional emergency preparedness system, and, more recently, the STRAC’s regional Southwest Texas (mental health) Crisis Collaborative, and a nationally recognized regional hospital and prehospital whole blood resuscitation program. In 2001 Dr. Stewart was appointed the Texas Governors EMS and Trauma Advisory Council where he served for 15 years as the Chair of the Trauma Systems Committee. He was a founding member and the first Chair of the National Trauma Institute and served on the Board of the Coalition for National Trauma Research. Since 2003, CNTR has garnered more than $136 million for trauma related research. He was a founding member and Advisory Committee Chair of UT System’s TRC4 which has led Texas state funding of more than $20 million in trauma related research funding since 2023. 

For 27 years he served on the American College of Surgeons (ACS) Committee on Trauma (COT), serving as the national Chair of the ACS COT from 2014-2018, and medical director of Trauma Programs for the American College of Surgeons from 2018-2022.  He was the 2022 Scudder Orator. In 2023 he received the American College of Surgeons Distinguished Service Award, the ACS’s highest annual honor. 

Since 1998 he has served as a member of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma (AAST). He is the current immediate Past President of the AAST. He is a current member of the Executive Committee, the Board of Managers and the Nominating Committee of the AAST. 

During his tenure as the ACS COT Chair, the COT developed and implemented the ACS Stop the Bleed educational program which has taught more than 5 million people the techniques to control life-threatening bleeding. He and ACS COT developed, fostered, and promoted an inclusive, collegial dialogue centered on how best to reduce firearm injury, death, and disability. This approach led to a common narrative with a non-partisan strategy focused on understanding and addressing the root causes of violence while simultaneously making firearm ownership as safe as reasonably possible. This common narrative provides a framework for pragmatic steps to reduce the burden of firearm-related injury, death and disability.