Kelly McQueen

Biography

McQueen was born at Fort Gordon Hospital in Augusta, Georgia, to Jon Anthony and Betty Kay Green. Shortly after her birth, her parents returned to their hometown in Minnesota. When McQueen was 5 years old, her parents moved the family to Littleton, Colorado where she spent the rest of her childhood. McQueen has two sisters, Holli Marie and Julie Louise.

McQueen graduated from Littleton High School in 1980, and then from Colorado College in 1984 with a bachelor's degree in Biology. She took several gap years after college before going on to attend the University of Vermont College of Medicine, graduating with an MD in 1991. She took her internship in internal medicine and the majority of her anesthesiology t St. Joseph’s Medical Center in Phoenix and the University of Arizona in Tucson, finishing her residency at the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona. She subsequently completed a fellowship in obstetrical anesthesia at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Upon completing her training she joined Valley Anesthesiology Consultants, a private practice in Phoenix, Arizona as a partner from 1996-2012. After 7 years of private practice, she returned to school to study Public Health, graduating from Harvard School of Public Health in 2002 with an MPH and a concentration in International Health.

In 2012, McQueen took the position of Director of Vanderbilt Anesthesia Global Health and Development at Vanderbilt University, where she directs the Global Anesthesia Fellowship and serves as adjunct faculty for the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health.

Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Relief

McQueen's first involvement in humanitarian work was an overseas rotation in the Dominican Republic. When a resident, where she joined an Obstetrical Team for People to People on a trip to Russia in 1992. Since then, she has worked with various global health organizations including Doctors Without Borders and Operation Smile.

She became a fellow of the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative (HHI) after completing her MPH at the Harvard School of Public Health in 2002. . During her time at HHI, McQueen began developing the Burden of Surgical Disease Working Group, and later Alliance for Surgery and Anesthesia Presence and The Global Surgical Consortium.

Medical Missions

Ordered chronologically:

Public Health Career

After receiving her MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health in 2002, McQueen went on to complete a fellowship at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) from 2002-2003. During her fellowship, she served at the Office of Naval Research where she worked with the US Navy’s International Field Offices on infectious disease topics. The Anthrax letter scare of 2002 occurred during her tenure with AAAS, prompting McQueen to plan and coordinate a bilateral meeting with Mexico on Emerging Infectious Disease Threats in Latin America in Cuernavaca, Mexico in September 2003.

Leadership

McQueen is currently a member of the World Health Organization's Global Initiative on Emergency and Essential Surgical Care (GIEESC). In 2006, she founded the Burden of Surgical Disease Working Group and served as its leader until its transition to the Alliance of Surgery and Anesthesia Presence in 2010. ASAP later became the 6th integrated society of the International Society of Surgeons; she was the inaugural president from 2013-15. In 2015, McQueen became one of the founding board members of the G4 Alliance.

In 2007, McQueen developed the idea for the Global Surgical Consortium (GSC), a 501c3 non-profit organization, which was officially established in 2010. McQueen continues to serve as founder and President of GSC.

Charitable Activities

In 2010, McQueen founded The Global Surgical Consortium, a 501c3 non-profit organization and charity dedicated to providing the evidence and data required for the building of surgical infrastructure in low-income countries.

Author

McQueen is the author of multiple peer-reviewed research and review articles, and is the author of two children's books, What's A Virus Anyway, published in 1990, and Let’s Talk Trash, published in 1992.In 1991, What's A Virus Anyway was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Children's Book Award.

Awards

She received the Colorado College Benezet Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. International College of Surgeons || International College of Surgeons Surgical Volunteerism and Humanitarian Award in 2010.

Publications

Her most cited publications are: