Rate My Professor John Magaña Morton

John Magaña Morton, MD, MPH, MHA, BS, FACS, FASMBS, is Professor of Surgery (Bariatric, Minimally Invasive), Vice-Chair for Quality, and Division Chief for Bariatric and Minimally Invasive Surgery in the Department of Surgery at Yale School of Medicine. He also serves as System Lead for Surgical Quality and Bariatric Services in the Yale New Haven Health System of six hospitals, Medical Director of Bariatric Surgery for Yale New Haven Health, Interim Co-Director of the Digestive Health Service Line, and Co-Chair of the Perioperative Services Quality Committee. Morton received his BS in 1988, MD in 1993, and MPH in 1993 from Tulane University. He earned his MHA in 1997 and completed a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar Fellowship at the University of Washington that same year. His training includes internship and residency at Tulane Medical Center (1993-1995, 1995-1999), Chief Residency at Swedish Medical Center (2001), and Fellowship in Advanced GI/Laparoscopic Surgery at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (2003).

From 2003 to 2019 at Stanford University School of Medicine, Morton served as Chief of Bariatric and Minimally Invasive Surgery, Clinic Chief for the Bariatric and Metabolic Inter-Disciplinary Clinic, and Director of the Bariatric and Minimally Invasive Surgery Fellowship, where he performed over 3500 bariatric surgeries. His research interests encompass quality improvement and bariatric surgery, patient safety, medical education, adolescent bariatric surgery, diabetes and gastric bypass outcomes, fertility and birth outcomes post-weight loss surgery, obesity disparities in health care, and the impact of weight loss on cancer screening and alcohol metabolism. He has published over 173 articles and 21 book chapters, edited five books including Quality in Obesity Treatment, Morbid Obesity: Perioperative Management, The ASMBS Textbook of Bariatric Surgery (1st and 2nd editions), and SAGES Handbook on Quality, Patient Safety and Outcomes, and serves on 11 editorial boards such as Obesity Surgery and Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases. Key publications include "Combining Medications With Bariatric Surgery to Treat Obesity" (JAMA, 2026), "The impact of hospital volume on metabolic and bariatric surgery outcomes" (Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases, 2025), and "Utilization of Low-Dose Phentermine for Weight Loss Prior to Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery" (Obesity Science & Practice, 2025). Morton has received 28 research awards from five surgical societies, five teaching awards at Stanford including the 2008 Arthur Bloomfield Clinical Teacher of the Year, ASMBS Lifetime Achievement Award (2016), and the 2026 ASMBS Distinguished Service Award. As inaugural national Chair of the Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery Accreditation and Quality Improvement Program (MBSAQIP), ASMBS President (2014-2015), and founder of the first obesity-related Political Action Committee, he has shaped national standards in bariatric surgery and multidisciplinary obesity care.