Dr. Juan Carlos Caicedo Professor of Surgery, Northwestern Medicine Division Head, Pediatric Transplant and Advanced Hepatobiliary Surgery Surgical Director, Siragusa Transplantation Center, Lurie Children’s Hospital Director, Northwestern Living Donor Liver Transplant Program Founder and Director, Hispanic Transplant Program at Northwestern Medicine Dr. Juan Carlos Caicedo is a Hispanic Colombian transplant and hepatobiliary surgeon and Professor of Surgery at Northwestern Medicine. He practices at both Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, specializing in multi-organ adult and pediatric transplantation and advanced hepatobiliary surgery. Dr. Caicedo completed his medical degree and General Surgery residency at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. He then pursued specialized training at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and Children’s Memorial Hospital (now Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago), completing fellowships in kidney, pancreas, and liver transplantation, pediatric abdominal organ transplantation, and hepatobiliary/living donor liver transplantation. Since joining Northwestern Medicine in 2006, he has remained a key faculty member and leader in transplant surgery. In his clinical practice, Dr. Caicedo performs abdominal organ transplantation for both adults and children with end-stage organ failure. He also leads advanced hepatobiliary procedures. Under his leadership, Northwestern Memorial Hospital's Liver Transplant Program has become the largest in Illinois. In the past year alone, the program saw a 27% increase in liver transplants, achieving a record 138 procedures. These outcomes were made possible through the adoption of cutting-edge technologies such as normothermic and hypothermic machine perfusion, normothermic regional perfusion, and innovations like partial liver transplantation—including reduced size, split, and living donor transplants—as well as Transplant Oncology. His team also performs complex multi-organ transplants, including heart-liver, lung-liver, and heart-liver-kidney combinations. Dr. Caicedo is the founder and director of the Hispanic Transplant Program at Northwestern Medicine—the first program of its kind in the U.S. The program was designed to meet the cultural, linguistic, and systemic needs of Hispanic patients navigating transplantation. Since its inception, the program has significantly increased access to care, improving transplant access by 91%, increasing living donor kidney transplants by 74%, and reducing disparities in living donor kidney transplants between Hispanic and White patients by 70%. Before the program began, only 9% of kidney transplant recipients at Northwestern Memorial Hospital were Hispanic; now, nearly one-third of the almost 400 annual kidney transplant recipients are Hispanic. The Hispanic Transplant Program has grown organically to include over 60 dedicated transplant providers, becoming the largest Hispanic transplant team in the country. The program operates at less than 1% of the total cost of the kidney transplant program, yet delivers outstanding clinical outcomes and generates a strong return on investment. This success has led to its expansion across multiple departments and transplant centers nationwide. Dr. Caicedo's work in this area has been supported by a prestigious NIH/NIDDK R01 grant to implement and evaluate the program in other transplant centers across the United States. Dr. Caicedo has earned national and international acclaim for his leadership and innovation. He was selected as the inaugural Chair of two major committees within the American Society of Transplant Surgeons: the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee and the International Relations Committee. He also serves as Co-Chair of the Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity, and Access (IDEAL) Task Force for the American Society of Transplantation. As a dedicated educator, Dr. Caicedo has trained 41 transplant surgery fellows, including 10 Hispanic transplant surgeons. He is a seven-time teaching award recipient, including five Excellence in Teaching awards from the Northwestern Department of Surgery and two Outstanding Teaching awards from the Feinberg School of Medicine. Honors and Awards • NIH/NIDDK R01 Grant ($3.8M): To implement and evaluate the Northwestern Medicine Hispanic Kidney Transplant Program, resulting in a 47% increase in Hispanic living kidney donations at participating centers. • Life Goes On Award (2008): From Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, for promoting organ donation in the Hispanic community. • Top 40 Under 40 (2009): Recognized by Crain's Chicago Business for his work creating the Hispanic Transplant Program. • Heroes for Hope Award (2013): From Gift of Hope, for his contributions to organ donation and transplantation. • Gift of Life Award (2016): From the National Kidney Foundation of Illinois, for co-developing a culturally competent Spanish-language website on living kidney donation: www.informate.org. • Medal of Excellence (2022): Awarded by the American Association of Kidney Patients (AAKP), one of the organization’s highest honors. • Latino Transplant Hero Award (2024): From the National Kidney Foundation of Illinois, recognizing his commitment to culturally sensitive care in the Latino community. Dr. Caicedo’s work has been featured in national publications, including ¡Un doctor por favor!: Why We Need More Hispanic Physicians in the U.S., and Why You Should Be One of Them by Paola Mina-Osorio, which highlights the importance of Hispanic representation in medicine.