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David Odell, M.D., M.S. joins the Department of Surgery as the Section Head of Thoracic Surgery. He completed a thoracic surgery fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh (2013) and his general surgery residency at Harvard/Beth Israel Deaconess (2009) after attending the University of Washington as a medical student (2004) and the University of Puget Sound as an undergraduate (2000). He also completed a master's degree in clinical investigation from Harvard Medical School (2011).
He is a health services researcher and runs an NIH funded lab that studies cancer care delivery. The lab's work focuses on using tools ranging from analysis of large datasets to one-on-one interviews with clinicians and patients better understand the reasons why best practice guidelines are not always followed in the real world in order to develop and implement systems that help ensure patients get the right care at the right time. His clinical specialty is thoracic surgery.
Dr. Odell is a member of the Society of Thoracic Surgeons, the Society of University Surgeons, the ACS among others in addition to being an appointed member of the Commission on Cancer, where he heads the thoracic cancer data standards group. He also leads the ACS/CoC National Quality Improvement Project on lung cancer lymph node staging, the ‘LungNODES ‘ (Node Operative Dissection and Evaluation Standards) project, and he is the Chair of the STS National Mentorship Program, connecting surgeons (at all career stages) with mentors across the country, and the Chair of the Looking to the Future Scholarship Program for the STS, an annual program for medical students and residents to explore careers in CT surgery by attending the annual meeting with a mentor.