LITTLE ROCK - Justin Michael Hire, MD, a decorated U.S. Army veteran who is fellowship-trained in pediatric orthopaedics, has joined the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) as a pediatric orthopaedic surgeon.

An assistant professor in the UAMS College of Medicine's Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Hire sees patients exclusively at Arkansas Children's Northwest in Springdale.

Hire is certified by the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgeons and was most recently an assistant professor of clinical orthopaedic surgery in the Pediatrics Department at Women and Children's Hospital at the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri, and the Cox Medical Center South in Springfield, Missouri. Previously, he served at the General Leonard Wood Army Community Hospital in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, as an orthopaedic staff surgeon and chief of the Orthopaedics and Podiatry Department.

Hire received his medical degree in 2011 from the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine. He then completed an internship in orthopaedic surgery, followed by a residency in orthopaedic surgery, at the Eisenhower Army Medical Center in Fort Gordon, Georgia. He went on to complete a fellowship in pediatric orthopaedics from Cincinnati Children's Hospital.

Hire was deployed with the Army's 541st Forward Surgical Team as part of Operation Inherent Resolve in Ash Shaddadi, Syria, in 2017, and was a pediatric orthopaedic surgeon volunteer for CURE International, a Christian nonprofit organization providing medical care to children experiencing primarily orthopedic and neurological conditions, in Malawi in 2020.

Among his service awards are a commendation medal earned during combat, an achievement medal, a combat medical badge, a service medal and a national defense service medal.