Biography

William Gourash is a nurse practitioner, senior research coordinator, and research investigator with the Minimally Invasive Bariatric and General Surgery Division at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. He has focused on general surgery for greater than 35 years. He started in the field bariatric surgery over 25 years ago as a clinical practitioner at the time of the innovation of the laparoscopic approach to bariatric surgery. He worked closely with Dr. Philip Schauer over those years in refining the laparoscopic approach and in the training of other practitioners/surgeons from all over the world. He has participated in all aspects of surgical care: preoperative evaluation and preparation, operative and postoperative follow-up. He has clinical experience with patients who have undergone all the common bariatric surgical procedures: Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass, Adjustable Gastric Bands, Sleeve Gastrectomy and Biliopancreatic Diversion. He received the first Distinguished Advanced Practice Provider Award from the ASMBS at Obesity Week 2017 and the ASMBS Ron Clements Patient Safety and Quality Award in 2022.He is a past President of the Integrated Health Section of the American Society for Metabolic and Bariatric Surgery (ASMBS) (2008-10). He is the founding and current chair of the Certified Bariatric Nurse Certification Program Committee of the ASMBS. Additionally, he is currently, active on the ASMBS Professional Education and Advanced Practice Provider Committees and is an Associate Editor for Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases (SOARD). He functioned as a lead research coordinator and investigator for several multicenter and single center clinical trials in bariatric surgery. He was Lead Coordinator at the University of Pittsburgh’s clinical site for the National Institute of Health’s Longitudinal Assessment of Bariatric Surgery (LABS) study as well as Chair of the Participant Recruitment and Retention Subcommittee. Currently, he is co-investigator in the multi-center Alliance of Randomized trials of Medicine vs. Metabolic surgery in Type 2 diabetes (ARMMS-T2D) study, the Intestinal Metabolic Reprogramming as a Key Mechanism of Gastric Bypass in Humans Study, which is addressing the hypothesis of intestinal adaptation as a mechanism of diabetes improvement post gastric bypass, and the Generation of a Cellular Atlas of Adipose Tissue in Mouse and Man Study.His bariatric surgical research interests include clinical and research post-surgery follow-up especially attrition, and retention, recruitment for clinical trials, professional credentialing/certification, patient education, preoperative evaluation and counseling, outcomes assessment post-surgery especially comorbidity resolution, remission, and reoccurrence. He has published more than 40 manuscripts and has been an invited speaker for over 50 presentations in the US and abroad.