Steven Labrash, CFSP
Mr. Steven Labrash, CFSP, works at the John A. Burns School of Medicine as the Director of the Willed Body Program. Steven graduated from Cypress Mortuary College in 1991 and has been involved with caring for the deceased every day since. Steven started working with UC San Diego’s Willed Body Program in 1997 and moved to Hawai‘i in 2004 to become our Director. Under Steven’s guidance, the Willed Body Program has grown 10-15% each year.
Steve’s passion has always been preservation and, as an anatomical embalmer and plastinator (= a person who applies a technique or process used in anatomy to preserve bodies or body parts), he enjoys the opportunity to improve the science of preservation. Steven is a faculty member with the John A. Burns School of Medicine as an Assistant Specialist Professor. He is a member of the American Association of Clinical Anatomist (AACA) and the International Society for Plastination (ISP). Steven is an international presenter for professional conferences in Embalming and Plastination and is currently preparing to host the 2020 Bi-Annual International Conference on Plastination at JABSOM.
It’s not just medical students who benefit from these altruistic donations; this last year we had over 900 doctors and surgeons in our lab for weekend surgical training. Our donors taught everything from dental implant, back, shoulder, hip, knee, ankle, OBGYN and plastic surgery. Much of the public is unaware that, once you become a doctor, your education is not over; most medical licenses require a certain number of hours training with new techniques/procedures and instrumentation. Due to our generous donor base in Hawai‘i, we have been able to offer those trainings here at JABSOM where surgeons in the past have had to leave Hawai‘i to receive this training.
