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INFORMATION FOR

Tara Sanft, MD

she/her/hers
Associate Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology)
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Additional Titles

Chief, Patient Experience Officer

Medical Director, Survivorship Clinic

About

Titles

Associate Professor of Medicine (Medical Oncology)

Chief, Patient Experience Officer; Medical Director, Survivorship Clinic

Biography

I am board certified in both medical oncology and hospice and palliative medicine, which I feel helps me treat the "whole person" and not just a disease. As the Chief Patient Experience Officer at Smilow Cancer Hospital, I enjoy thinking about improving care, especially where the provider and patient experience overlaps. As a breast oncologist, I have a busy practice and enjoy taking care of women with newly diagnosed breast cancer. As the director of the Yale Survivorship Clinic, one of the nation’s only multi-disciplinary clinics specializing in cancer survivorship, I learn from patients about key issues after treatment and this informs my role as Chair of the NCCN Survivorship Guidelines. My research focuses on healthy lifestyles and quality of life after cancer. I am a facilitator for Relationship-Centered Communication Workshop that address how we develop therapeutic relationships with our patients and each other.

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Appointments

Other Departments & Organizations

Education & Training

Fellowship
Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois (2010)
Fellowship
Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois (2010)
Resident
Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine (2007)
MD
Medical College Wisconsin (2004)

Research

Overview

I conduct research with Dr. Melinda Irwin, and have completed several lifestyle intervention trials. I am the Principal Investigator of an NCI-funded R-01 study in which we randomize women to usual care or a healthy diet and exercise intervention in women undergoing chemotherapy for early stage breast cancer. We hope to find early intervention on lifestyle factors makes chemotherapy completion easier. Additionally, I am the site Principal Investigator of a study looking a resilience trajectories in patients diagnosed with breast, colon and prostate cancer, so that we may better learn who needs our help the most in order to thrive after cancer. I have mentored fellows on research projects including investigating decision-making for extended endocrine therapy in hormone receptor positive breast cancer; communication behaviors and patient experience during hospitalization on an oncology unit, exercise behaviors and chemotherapy completion rates and delivering survivorship education through an Enhancing Community Health Outcomes (ECHO) program.

Medical Research Interests

Breast Diseases; Communication; Survivorship

Research at a Glance

Yale Co-Authors

Frequent collaborators of Tara Sanft's published research.

Publications

2024

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Clinical Trials

Current Trials

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Clinical Care

Overview

Tara Sanft, MD, is a Yale Medicine medical oncologist and director of the Survivorship Program at Yale Cancer Center and Smilow Cancer Hospital. She enjoys helping people with the issues they face after cancer treatment and creating survivorship care plans for them—individualized “road maps” for how to go about living daily life after cancer.

“Once the patient is done with treatment and on surveillance,” Dr. Sanft says, “they're considered in the ‘survivorship phase’ of their treatment. And that's the phase where they get lost in transition and the patient may think, ‘I'm falling off the cliff, I finished my treatment, my next appointment is in a year… now what?’”

To help, Dr. Sanft and her team, which includes a social worker, physical therapist and nutritionist, address common problems people may be experiencing, including fear of recurrence and sexual intimacy issues. They also make specific diet, exercise and follow-up care recommendations to help survivors feel more in control of their lives.

“For many patients, this survivorship period is marked with fear,” she says. “It's kind of adjusting to a ‘new normal’—a new sense of your physical, emotional and spiritual self after cancer.”

Clinical Specialties

Medical Oncology; Breast Oncology

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Locations

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