Dr. Chi-Fu Jeffrey Yang is a thoracic surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor of surgery at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Yang has received numerous awards, including recognition for exceptional accomplishment in both clinical care and in teaching. In 2021, he received the Harvard Medical School Charles McCabe Faculty Prize for Excellence in Teaching.
Dr. Yang is focused on raising awareness of lung cancer screening. He started the American Lung Cancer Screening Initiative (ALCSI), a 501(c)(3) non-profit, which has worked with communities across 50 states to highlight the importance of lung screening. ALCSI has led over 450 community events that have reached over 30,000 people.
Since 2020, he has also worked on four resolutions, S. Res. 780, 426, 863 and 512 to raise awareness for lung cancer and lung cancer screening; these resolutions were passed in the U.S. Senate, by unanimous support from all 100 U.S. Senators. In 2021, he received the Harvard Medical School Dean’s Community Service Faculty Award in recognition of his efforts.
From a research standpoint, he is the co-principal investigator of the INSPIRE study, which is a study—supported by an AHRQ R18 grant—to evaluate the impact of lung cancer screening in Black women at high-risk of developing lung cancer. He is also focused on research to improve lung cancer screening guidelines and published a study in the Journal of Clinical Oncology that demonstrates how pack-year smoking history is an inadequate and biased measure to determine lung cancer screening eligibility.