Dr. Johnson graduated from Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in 1980. He completed his residency in internal medicine and his fellowship in pulmonary and critical care at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas and remained there on the faculty. While there, Dr. Johnson held numerous leadership positions including Chief Medical Resident, Director of the MICU, Director of the Pulmonary Critical Care Fellowship Program, Director of the Internal Medicine Residency Program, and Assistant Chief of the Department of Medicine. Dr. Johnson retired from the Military Medical Corps in September 2000 and joined faculty at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
Dr. Johnson is currently the Charles and Alice Hohenberg Professor of Medicine and is the Clinical Director of the UAB Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine. He holds a secondary appointment as Professor of Cell, Integrative and Developmental Biology. Dr. Johnson earned forty teaching awards during his career including the UAB President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in the School of Medicine in 2006, Best Basic Science Professor in 2008, and the Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching for Senior Faculty in 2019. Dr. Johnson received the Cobbs-Rutsky Award for Clinical Excellence on ten separate occasions, and he has been included as one of the “Best Doctors in America” since 2006. He has numerous awards based on high patient satisfaction scores.