As part of our “Meet Yale Internal Medicine” series, today’s feature is on Roxanne Wadia, MD, assistant professor of medicine (medical oncology).
Q: What brought you to Yale School of Medicine?
A: I came to Yale for my fellowship. I was looking for a place that had a good balance in terms of research and clinical care, in the northeast, and had a strong fellowship focus. During my fellowship, I wanted to be able to focus on my subspeciality of oncology and hematology. At the time, I was able to practice at Yale New Haven Hospital (YNHH), the VA [Connecticut Healthcare System] and the Hospital of Saint Raphael’s (now YNHH Saint Raphael Campus) which provided me three very different settings in which to practice medicine. After fellowship, I earned a full-time faculty appointment at the VA – I teach fellows, medical students and residents. I also do my clinical work and research at the VA.
Q: What led you into hematology and medical oncology?
A: I wanted to be a field where you tend to see patients for longer lengths of time and have longer relationships with patients. I wasn’t overly interested in a procedural field like gastroenterology or cardiology. Cancer has always been the most interesting field to me. When we learned pharmacology in medical school, the chemotherapy drugs were always the things that I wanted to learn more about versus other medications. Additionally, the research is always changing.
Q: Are there certain cancers that you see more in the veteran population?
A: We see and treat a lot of prostate cancer, that is where my research area is. We also see a lot of lung and bladder cancers and a fair amount of lymphoma as well. Unfortunately, veterans tend to have higher rates of smoking - those associated cancers tend to be lung and bladder cancer. We do treat head and neck cancer – we have a lot of those cases proportionally. Additionally, we see a lot of prostate cancer because a majority of veterans are older men and age is the number one risk factor for prostate cancer.
Q: What is your research focus?
A: I did a special fellowship in informatics after my medical oncology/hematology fellowship. My research is primarily in big data, so I look into big data through the VA. One project that I am involved with is the Million Veterans Program (MVP), a voluntary research study to collect DNA samples from a million veterans for research. Yale’s John Concato, MD, is one of the principal investigators on the program. We are going to use this data to learn more about prostate cancer, how it is diagnosed, how it is treated, and see if we can determine who might develop a more severe disease or not.
Q: Why should a prospective medical oncology/hematology fellow consider Yale?
A: We let our fellows be fellows. I think we have a good mix of autotomy and supervision. At the VA, we see many disease groups, compared to specializing in only one. This path can be challenging but I think it is an advantage because we must figure out how to treat the person as a whole. We tell our fellows that after you have done VA clinic for six months, you will know how to treat lung cancer, prostate cancer and bladder cancer. You will learn how to develop a plan, respond to challenges and figure out next steps. Our fellows will become independent thinkers.