Shanu N. Kothari M.D., FACS, FASMBS, current President of the ASMBS, currently serves as the Vice Chair of Medical Staff Affairs at Prisma Health in Greenville, SC. Prior to this, he was in community practice for 18 years in La Crosse, WI. He earned his medical degree from the University of Illinois College of Medicine-Peoria. He completed his general surgery residency at Gundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation in La Crosse, Wisconsin and his fellowship in Minimally Invasive Surgery at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia.
Dr. Kothari established a minimally invasive bariatric surgery program at Gundersen Health System and has served as its Director from 2001 until 2019. He has also established a Minimally Invasive Bariatric Surgery and Advanced Laparoscopy Fellowship through the Gundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation in 2003, and served as the fellowship director since its inception. He is an Associate Professor of Surgery,
Dr. Kothari is past President of the Wisconsin Surgical Society – a chapter of the American College of Surgeons, Past Chair of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) Clinical Issues Committee, past Co-Chair of the 2015 Obesity Summit, and has previously served as a member of the ASMBS Revisional Surgery and National Quality Forum Taskforces, ASMBS Quality Improvement Committee, and ASMBS Task Force: Integrating Emerging Technology & Procedures into Clinical Practice. He is a past chair of the ASMBS Program Committee, Advocacy Committee and STAR (State Access to Care Representative) for the upper Midwest region, Obesity Week Board of Managers – ASMBS Representative, Flexible Endoscopy Committee member, and ASMBS Rural Surgery Committee member. He served as a mentor for two ASMBS quality improvement initiatives, ENERGY (Enhanced Recovery Goals in Bariatric Surgery) and DROP (Decreasing Readmissions through Opportunities Provided).
Dr. Kothari served as the senior author for the 2015 and 2014 ASMBS Top Video Award presentations, the 2010 ASMBS Karl Storz Endoscopy America Fellow Scholarship Award, as well as three ASMBS ObesityWeek Top Ten papers.
Dr. Kothari has over 140 publications in peer-reviewed journals, and has served as the senior editor of a 2011 Surgical Clinics of North America issue dedicated to Metabolic and Bariatric surgery. He is an editor of Obesity Care and Bariatric Surgery, and associate editor of Evidence-Based Approach to Minimally Invasive Surgery and an Associate Editor of Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases. He is currently the Second Vice President of the Fellowship Council and the President-Elect of the Southwestern Surgical Congress.