Member Biography

Brief Statement of Goals and Plans for Building Indiana University School of Medicine’s Reputation in Surgical and Oncology Health Services Research – Anthony D. Yang, MD, MS My goal as a surgeon-scientist in the Division of Surgical Oncology, Department of Surgery at the Indiana University School of Medicine and IU Health is to increase our prominence and reputation as a leader in innovative and impactful surgical and oncology health services research. The IU School of Medicine, Simon Comprehensive Cancer, Center, and the Department of Surgery have an existing, strong foundation of research excellence. I believe I have the skills, expertise, and experience to help accomplish this goal by advancing my own innovative and successful research program, by supporting and expanding upon our existing success within the next 5-10 years, by creating new programs that will help other investigators pursue their research successfully, and by mentoring junior investigators. I am a surgeon-scientist. Over the past 10 years, I have built a personal health services research (HSR) portfolio focused at the intersection of Improvement Science and Dissemination and Implementation Science (D&I Science). I study how healthcare quality is measured, how quality data is utilized by healthcare providers to improve care, and trial innovative strategies to support providers, hospitals, and healthcare systems in implementing successful quality improvement (QI) initiatives to improve patient care. I have successfully obtained both intramural and extramural funding for my research, obtaining competitive grants from entities such as the American College of Surgeons, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, and, most significantly, I am the recipient of a K08 Career Development Award from the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute of the NIH. I have published over 100 manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals, including JAMA, NEJM, Annals of Surgery, JAMA Surgery, JACS, and Annals of Surgical Oncology. I have served as a reviewer on NIH Study Sections, am a graduate of the National Cancer Institute’s prestigious Training Institute for Dissemination and Implementation Research in Cancer (TIDIRC), and serve as a co-investigator on numerous HSR and D&I Science grants. I have built a national reputation in surgical and oncology HSR, and I plan to continue to develop advance my research portfolio at IU, and thus contribute to enhancing the overall success and reputation of the IU School of Medicine. My most immediate goal is to obtain R-level NIH funding to support my research and to obtain continuous extramural funding for my research. I have extensive experience in building, implementing, and leading infrastructure and programs to support surgical and oncology HSR. I served as the Associate Director of the Northwestern University Surgical Outcomes and Quality Improvement Center from 2014-2022. During that time, I assisted the Founding Director, Dr. Karl Bilimoria (current Chair of the IU Department of Surgery) in building a nationally recognized center for successful and impactful surgical HSR, growing from 4 faculty, 2 research fellows, and 3 staff when arrived in 2014, to over 15 surgeon investigators and research faculty, 9 research fellows, and 15 staff in 2022. During the 8 years that I helped lead SOQIC, numerous investigators obtained K- and R-level funding for their research and published their research in high-impact journals including NEJM and JAMA. A large contributor to SOQIC’s success is that we established multi-institutional QI collaboratives in surgery and oncology at the health system (Northwestern Medicine System-wide Breast Cancer (founding director), Colorectal Cancer, and Lung Cancer Collaboratives) and regional levels (the Illinois Cancer Collaborative (founding director) and the nationally recognized, 56-hospital Illinois Surgical Quality Improvement Collaborative). These QI collaboratives served as “laboratories” in which implementation studies and pragmatic trials were able to be conducted to support the hypothesis-driven, extramural grant-funded research of numerous investigators. I plan to build, support, and lead similar programs as a part of the IU Surgical Outcomes and Quality Improvement Center and within the Simon Comprehensive Cancer Center, not only to support my research, but the research of other surgical and oncology HSR physician-scientists and research faculty. Finally, I will serve as a research mentor to junior faculty and trainees who are pursuing careers in research. I have served as a mentor to numerous junior faculty, residents, and students interested in HSR, Improvement Science, and D&I Science, My mentees have been productive in submitting and obtaining grant funding for their own research, publishing manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals, and pursing successful careers as physician-scientists. I also contributed to the recent NCI T32 awarded to Dr. Bilimoria at Northwestern, and I will serve as a mentor and contributor on the current T32 proposal being submitted by Dr. Bilimoria at IU. I am excited to continue serving as a mentor at IU because I sincerely believe that fostering the success of the current and future generations of junior investigators will be the most powerful mechanism by which we will be able to enhance and elevate IU’s prominence and reputation nationally as a preeminent research institution. In conclusion, I decided to join the faculty at the Indiana University School of Medicine because the structure and support to perform innovative, impactful surgical and oncology health services research exists. I am confident that there is ample room at IU for not only my own personal growth as a researcher, but for the institution to grow in prominence as a national leader in these areas within the next 5-10 years. I firmly believe that my skills, expertise, and experience can make a substantial, positive contribution towards achieving these goals and I look forward to this opportunity.

M.D. - Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL 08/1998-06/2002

M.S. - Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL 07/2014-06/2016

Fellowship - The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 07/2009-06/2011

Post-doctoral Fellowship - The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX 07/2004-06/2006