In Louisiana, in an office responsible for training the next generation of osteopathic physicians, Dr. Mark Sanders carries two professional identities at once: physician and attorney, and neither has ever taken a back seat to the other. He began serving as Interim Dean of the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine’s Louisiana campus, VCOM-Louisiana, on July 1, 2021, and was named Dean in July 2022. He continues to serve in that role today. His tenure in Louisiana campus leadership now spans more than five years. VCOM’s current materials continue to identify him as Dean for the Louisiana campus.
Running a Campus, and a State’s Medical Pipeline
As Dean, Dr. Sanders oversees VCOM-Louisiana’s academic operations and works to advance the campus’s mission of educating physicians to serve the healthcare needs of the region. His responsibilities span medical education, faculty and student development, clinical partnerships, research, and community engagement. VCOM has also positioned the Louisiana campus as a partner in expanding healthcare access for underserved populations in Northeast Louisiana, including through mobile medical units designed to reach isolated and vulnerable populations while giving medical students hands-on community-engagement experience.
The campus’s broader mission is closely tied to rural and medically underserved communities across Louisiana and the Delta region. VCOM reports that more than 60 percent of its graduates practice in rural or medically underserved counties or parishes, reinforcing the role of the Louisiana campus within that physician pipeline.
A Career Built on Geriatrics and Palliative Care
Before Louisiana, Dr. Sanders spent years in academic medicine and clinical leadership at the University of North Texas Health Science Center, where his list of titles alone tells the story of a physician stretched across an unusually wide range of disciplines. He served as a geriatric medical expert and a palliative medicine expert, as Chief of the Division of Palliative Medicine and of the Division of Research, and as Director of Student, Employee, and Executive Health, as well as Director of Travel Medicine.
He was Fellowship Director for the Geriatric and Palliative Medicine Fellowship Training Programs, and Course Director for Clinical Medicine 1 through 4, as well as for a course in Advanced Elder Law, a pairing that reflects just how tightly his two careers were already woven together. During this period, he developed a clinical and academic focus spanning family medicine, geriatrics, hospice and palliative medicine, legal medicine, and public health.
In the middle of that stretch, from 2003 to 2004, he stepped away for a year as a Faculty Scholar at Harvard Medical School.
Building Programs in Illinois and Alabama
From 2010 to 2015, Dr. Sanders chaired the Department of Family Medicine at Midwestern University in Illinois. He then moved to VCOM-Auburn, where he held senior academic and curriculum leadership roles before later serving as Associate Dean, including responsibilities involving medical education, geriatrics, and medical genetics. VCOM’s official materials confirm that he subsequently brought this leadership experience to the Louisiana campus, first as Associate Dean for Curriculum, Assessment and Medical Education and then as Interim Dean before becoming Dean.
That progression — from department leadership to curriculum and assessment, and ultimately to campus administration — gave him experience spanning both physician education and institutional leadership.
The Law Practice That Never Closed
Since 2015, Dr. Sanders has also worked as a Founder and Senior Partner at Sanders Law Group, PLLC, providing legal services across elder law, guardianship, probate, medical law, estate planning, Medicaid and VA law, and related matters affecting elderly, disabled, and homebound clients. The firm’s current model is explicitly built around combining legal and medical expertise, including house calls to hospitals, independent-living facilities, long-term-care settings, inpatient facilities, and hospice environments.
His legal work draws directly on his medical background. Sanders Law Group describes him as a board-certified family physician with additional certifications in geriatric medicine, hospice and palliative medicine, legal medicine, and public health, while his LLM is in Elder Law.
A Practice Defined by Overlap, Not Separation
What distinguishes Dr. Sanders is not that he holds two credentials, but that his professional work has consistently brought the two disciplines into the same practice. His clinical grounding in hospice and palliative medicine informs his legal work in elder law, estate planning, advance care planning, and matters involving the needs and independence of older adults. His background in molecular genetics sits alongside a law practice built around elder law, medical law, Medicaid and VA planning, and related services.
That same perspective now informs his work in medical education. At VCOM-Louisiana, he leads a campus serving a region where rural health needs, physician shortages, and access to care remain central concerns.
The result is a career that has moved through clinical practice, academic medicine, genetics, geriatrics, legal medicine, elder law, and medical education without abandoning its central concern: helping older, vulnerable, and medically underserved populations navigate complex systems of care.
A Record Built Across Medicine, Law, and Education
Dr. Sanders is board-certified in family medicine and has additional certifications in geriatric medicine, hospice and palliative medicine, legal medicine, and public health. He holds a DO, JD, MPH, LLM in Elder Law, and MS in Clinical Molecular Genetics. VCOM confirms his academic credentials and identifies him as Dean of its Louisiana campus.
He has led Sanders Law Group since its founding in 2015, while his VCOM leadership has progressed from Associate Dean to Interim Dean and, since July 2022, Dean. His academic work has also included leadership in family medicine, geriatrics, medical genetics, curriculum, assessment, and medical education.
Across Texas, Illinois, Alabama, and now Louisiana, the pattern in Dr. Sanders’s career has never really changed. His work has consistently brought medicine, education, and law together in service of patients and communities, particularly older and vulnerable populations.
