He is a professor in both public health and medicine at E. He is emeritus executive vice president for health affairs at Emory as well as emeritus president, CEO, and chairman of the board of Emory Healthcare.
He completed his internship and residency training at University of Michigan in otolaryngology in 1975.
He joined the department of otolaryngology and maxillofacial surgery at University of Virginia School of Medicine in 1977.
He later served as associate dean for clinical practice at Johns Hopkins and became dean of the medical faculty and vice president for medicine at Johns Hopkins in 1990.
Johns served as interim head of Michican Medicine (formerly the University of Michigan Health System) in 2014 and as interim head of Emory's Woodruff Health Sciences Center in 2015.