Dr. Hargarten is a Professor of Emergency Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin. He was the Founding director of MCW’s Firearm Injury Center in 1998, one of the first centers in the United States, focused on Firearm related death and injury. He has served on many expert committees and advisory task forces. He is the founding president of the Society for Advancement of Violence and Injury Research, and a past president of the Association of Academic Chairs of Emergency Medicine. In 2011, Dr. Hargarten was elected to the Institute of Medicine (IOM), now the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) of the National Academy of Sciences (NASEM) and is a former member of its Global Forum on Violence Prevention and its Global Health Board. Dr. Hargarten currently serves on the executive committee of the Transportation Research Board of NASEM and is the current Vice-Chair of the Community Preventive Services Task Force of the CDC.

Dr. Hargarten graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) with a BA in History. He graduated from MCW in 1975 and completed his internship at Gorgas Hospital in the Canal Zone of Panama in 1976. He completed his MPH at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and Hygiene focusing on injury prevention and control. In 2011, Dr. Hargarten was nominated and inducted into The Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars.

Dr. Hargarten has practiced emergency medicine for over 35 years and is a nationally and internationally recognized leader in emergency medicine and injury prevention and control. He has published numerous peer reviewed articles that have advanced our understanding in a variety of injury problems including groundbreaking work to establish a firearms/violence death reporting system. He has served on the Violence and Injury Prevention Mentoring Committee for the World Health Organization.