Dr. Jay Johannigman

Dr. Jay Johannigman, M.D., is a Cincinnati trauma and critical care surgeon whose military medical career spanned 46 years. He returned home to Cincinnati in July 2025 and retired from the U.S. Army Reserve as a colonel that November, closing a career that took him from the operating rooms of the University of Cincinnati Medical Center to battlefield hospitals overseas.

He completed seven combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, serving as a flight surgeon, trauma director, and director of clinical services in combat hospitals. He carried the lessons he learned at war back to civilian trauma centers, helping bridge military and civilian medicine throughout his career.

A founding leader of the Cincinnati Center for the Sustainment of Trauma and Readiness Skills (Cincinnati CSTARS), established in 2001, Dr. Johannigman helped create one of the first military-civilian training partnerships in the United States. For more than 20 years, Cincinnati CSTARS has trained every U.S. Air Force Critical Care Aeromedical Transport Team, the crews who fly the most critically injured service members to definitive care.

Now back in Cincinnati for good, Dr. Johannigman is focused on strengthening the region's emergency preparedness. His current work includes developing a geriatric injury prevention program to reduce falls among older adults and helping local hospitals and first responders plan for large-scale emergencies before they happen. He also serves as Chief Medical Officer at Knight Aerospace, a leader in advanced aeromedical transportation, and as an adjunct professor at the F. Edward Hebert School of Medicine at the Uniformed Services University.