JEDI Council at Work

Strong Service to Others 

“I was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. While I had no physicians in my family and was one of the first to graduate college, I always had the idea I wanted to be a doctor from a small child. I don’t know quite where it came from, but it was always there. After finishing high school, I went to U.C. Berkeley where I studied Physiology/Anatomy and gained a deep love for teaching. During the school year and summers, I worked tutoring Chemistry (yes, I’m the person who loved organic chemistry).

Between college and medical school, I was a high school math teacher at Berkeley High School, which probably ranks as one of the hardest jobs I had in my life. From there and after lots of emergency department volunteering, I went to U.C. San Francisco for medical school where I knew from nearly the beginning of medical school that I wanted to be an academic emergency physician. I stayed committed to that pathway through medical school and residency in Emergency Medicine at Alameda County Medical Center in Oakland, California.

In my intern year, I had a formative experience after a terrible death disclosure in the ED that I performed with no training or supervision. I vowed I would do something to change that. As a 3rd year EM resident, I did a nationwide research study that showed that in emergency medicine residencies we spent less than one hour training residents – not enough! In 1998, right after residency, I came to Emory by happenstance – we happened to be visiting town for a wedding and I was job searching. I cold-called Emory and got an interview the next day… the rest is history!

I have always loved trying to help those in need and those in crisis with no questions asked. I enjoy just being there to help. I am so fortunate to have had 23 amazing years at Emory as faculty, where I have been able to develop my love, skill, and passion for caring for the seriously ill and have had so many incredible experiences to influence change locally, regionally, nationally and internationally as a teacher, clinician, researcher, and leader.

Along the way, I met and married my husband Robert of 23 years, had two incredible boys ages now 19 and 22, and acquired 2 silly dogs and 3 big horses. We are one big happy family!”

JEDI Work in DFPM and Beyond

In addition to serving as Chair of our department, Dr. Ted Johnson is Co-Chair of the Emory Collaborative for Community Outreach and Health Disparities; this group received the 2021 Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Service Award and was a finalist in the 2021 Atlanta Business Chronicle Healthcare Hero Awards in the Community Outreach category.

As a leader in General Internal Medicine, Geriatrics, and Family and Preventive Medicine, he has been committed to transparency - all positions with title, dedicated time, or promotion are posted. He has recently created an Inclusion in Publishing metric and tool kit for academic units to discern how to increase belonging and inclusion around academic manuscripts.  In 2023, Dr. Johnson received the Larry Zaroff Man of Good Conscience Award from the American Medical Women's Association, presented annually to a man who has been a champion and supporter of women in medicine.

Dr. Johnson serves as a coach for the RYSE Under-Represented in Medicine Program Cohort and is a sponsorship advisor for the Society of General Internal Medicine Women & Medicine Commission's Career Advising Program. In his position as director of Georgia GEAR (an HRSA Geriatric Workforce Enhancement Program), Dr. Johnson has funded programs such as ALTER,  a Dementia Friendly Faith Villages program to prepare historically African American Churches to foster community to be inclusive for those living with dementia and RYSE, the Department of Medicine's URiM faculty development program.