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Outreach & Engagement Committee

Position

Member

Committee Chair  
Dawn LaPorte, MD
Committee Member
Christen Russo, MD
Committee Member
Gary Friedlander, MD
Committee Member
Elizabeth Lieberman, MD
DEI Task force Chair

Dawn LaPorte, MD

Dr Dawn LaPorte is a Professor and Vice Chair for Education in the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Dr LaPorte has served as orthopaedic Residency Program Director at Johns Hopkins for 15 years and has served as Vice Chair for the ACGME Orthopaedic Surgery Residency Review Committee. She is passionate about education, and has been selected for numerous teaching and mentorship awards and serves as the Chair of the Outreach & Engagement Committee for RJOS as well as for the BOS and has helped create and lead the OrthoUnited Leadership Program for medical students since 2022.

Dr LaPorte's clinical interests are surgery of the hand and wrist.  She is a past member of theAmerican Society of Surgery for the Hand (ASSH) Council and has also served as co-chair of the Resident Educator Workshop at the ASSH Annual Meeting since 2007 and as chair of the ASSH Resident Review Course.  

Dr La Porte will serve as the Education Division Director for ASSH 2023-2026. She is the Review Section editor for the Journal of Hand Surgery American. She is also a recent Past President of theRuth Jackson Orthopaedic Society and is the co-founder of Women in Orthopaedics Worldwide (WOW).

Our Work

What we do

RJOS was thrilled to partner with several regional orthopaedic societies this year. In October, the Eastern Orthopedic Association (EOA) and the Ruth Jackson Orthopaedic Society collaborated to make EOA’s 2024 Annual Meeting more diverse and inclusive. Thoughtful planning for the meeting involved a careful overview of the programming with faculty invitations to specifically include RJOS members, along with topics not covered in the past, including Trailblazing Women in Orthopaedics, How to Design a Diverse Residency Program, and Generational Advice for Surgeons.

Additionally, RJOS funded a travel award, sponsoring an accepted resident abstract in the realm of Outreach & Engagement.

RJOS will collaborate with the Western Orthopaedic Association in Koloa, Hawaii, from July 30 to August 2, 2025. This year’s meeting features a distinguished faculty lineup, including RJOS Past-President Mary I. O’Connor, MD, as the Presidential Guest Speaker. Registration is now open! With these collaborations, RJOS members attend these meetings at the member rate, even if they are not members. These events are incredibly family-friendly, encouraging participants to attend the conference and include their families in the trip. These efforts to grow our community make all our meetings more inclusive. RJOS hopes to collaborate similarly with other societies in the future.

In 2022, we surveyed our membership to learn more about you!
  • Our membership identifies primarily as female (91%) and white (75%). Ten percent of you identified as Latino, 10% Asian, and 12% Black or African American.
  • You value the opportunities we offer in networking and mentorship most and the sources on our website the least.
  • You offered some valuable information on how we can make things better for you, and we have brought many of these ideas to the board, such as more medical student involvement, outreach and engagement resources, and partnerships with other societies.

Yes, sign me up!

And help drive change!

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