Jorge Bezerra, M.D.

Biography

Jorge A. Bezerra, M.D., is Professor and Chair of the Department of Pediatrics at UT Southwestern Medical Center. He specializes in pediatric gastroenterology and holds the Robert L. Moore Chair in Pediatrics.

Dr. Bezerra earned his medical degree from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte School of Medicine in Brazil. After a pediatrics residency at the University of Arizona Health Sciences, he completed clinical and research fellowships in pediatric gastroenterology, hepatology, and nutrition at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. There, he would also serve as Director of the Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and Nutrition; Medical Director of the Pediatric Liver Care Center; and Director of the Digestive Health Center.

Certified by the American Board of Pediatrics in pediatric gastroenterology and pediatric transplant hepatology, he joined UT Southwestern in 2022.

As department Chair and a practicing pediatric gastroenterologist, Dr. Bezerra provides strategic vision and operational leadership for the pediatric clinical, research, and training programs at UT Southwestern. He also serves as Pediatrician-in-Chief for Children’s Medical Center Dallas, overseeing the quality of pediatric patient care and the integration of clinical and academic activities.

Dr. Bezerra is the principal investigator of multiple grants from the National Institutes of Health that are focused on preclinical and translational research on biliary atresia, the most common cause of chronic liver disease in children. His scientific achievements include the discovery of a key immunologic signature in the liver of children with biliary atresia. This discovery led to a test, now transitioning to clinical use, that facilitates diagnosis of biliary atresia and shortens the time to surgical treatment.

A prolific author and lecturer, he has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and scores of book chapters, invited papers, and abstracts. He is a Co-Editor of Liver Disease in Children, 5th Edition, and he serves as a reviewer for numerous scholarly journals.

Dr. Bezerra is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation and the Association of American Physicians. He is also a Fellow of the American Gastroenterological Association and in 2020 served as the seventy-first President of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. In addition, he served as Chairman of the Board of Scientific Counselors of the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in 2021-2022.