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James Yu, MD, MHS, is a practicing radiation oncologist at Smilow Cancer Hospital at Saint Francis Hospital, Department of Radiation Oncology, in Hartford, CT.
He is a former Professor of Radiation Oncology at the Yale School of Medicine, and former Associate Chief Medical Officer of the Smilow Cancer Hospital and Care Centers. He was most recently the Executive Vice Chair of Columbia University Irving Medical Center Department of Radiation Oncology.
Dr. Yu specializes in treating genitourinary cancers such as kidney, bladder and prostate, central nervous system cancers and cases requiring stereotactic radiosurgery, and has presented and lectured internationally on these subjects. He also treats rectal, breast, and lung cancers at Saint Francis Hospital.
In his academic work, Dr. Yu conducts research on ways to use radiotherapy treatments to improve outcomes for cancer patients. “We need to push the field ever forward and not be satisfied with merely prolonging survival,” says Dr. Yu. “I think radiosurgery will play a role in this. As systemic therapies improve and our ability to control microscopically disseminated disease improves, noninvasive ablative therapies will become ever more important.”
As a former Yale Center for Clinical Investigation scholar and founding member of the Cancer Outcomes, Public Policy, and Effectiveness Research (COPPER) Center at Yale, Dr. Yu’s research centers on the comparative effectiveness of new radiation technologies and how these new technologies are adopted nationally.
Dr. Yu is currently the Deputy Editor-In-Chief of the journal Practical Radiation Oncology and is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Clinical Oncology - Clinical Cancer Informatics, JNCI, JNCI-Cancer Spectrum, European Urology - Oncology, Journal of Surgical Oncology, and Oncology (Williston Park), and former editorial board member of the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
He has published over 350 original manuscripts and co-edited the textbook Pocket Radiation Oncology and Principles of Clinical Cancer Research. He is the radiation oncology co-chair for the Southwest Oncology Group Genitourinary Cancers Committee, and a nationally recognized expert in patient reported outcomes.