Dr. Hashem El-Serag is a distinguished Palestinian-American physician-scientist who currently serves as the Margaret M. and Albert B. Alkek Chairman of the Department of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine and as Vice President for the Learning Health System Initiative. Born in 1966 in Libya to Palestinian parents from Gaza, he received his medical degree with honors from Al-Arab Medical University in Benghazi in 1991 before immigrating to the United States. He completed his residency in internal medicine at Yale University Greenwich Hospital (1993-1995) and a gastroenterology fellowship at the University of New Mexico (1995-1997), where he also earned a Master of Public Health in 1998. He joined Baylor College of Medicine and the Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center in 1999, serving as Chief of the Gastroenterology & Hepatology Section from 2007 to 2016 before assuming his current leadership roles.
Dr. El-Serag is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking research in hepatocellular carcinoma, hepatitis C virus, and the clinical epidemiology of digestive disorders including Barrett's esophagus and esophageal adenocarcinoma. His seminal work has established critical understanding of the risk factors, natural history, and outcomes of liver cancer, significantly influencing clinical guidelines and screening protocols worldwide. With over 650 publications to his name and an impressive H-index of 150, his research has been consistently recognized with more than 70 funded research grants from prestigious organizations including NIH, VA, and the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas. Remarkably, he has been named among the world's top 1% most cited clinical researchers annually from 2014 through 2023, demonstrating the profound impact of his scholarly contributions to hepatology and gastroenterology.
Beyond his research accomplishments, Dr. El-Serag has provided significant leadership to the medical community through his presidency of the American Gastroenterological Association (2019) and his tenure as Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology (2012-2017). His election to both the American Society for Clinical Investigators and the American Association of Physicians underscores his standing as one of the most influential physician-scientists of his generation. As Director of the Texas Medical Center Digestive Diseases Center, he continues to advance translational research while mentoring the next generation of medical researchers and clinicians. His current work focuses on optimizing the learning health system to improve patient outcomes through data-driven clinical decision making, positioning him to continue making transformative contributions to digestive disease research and patient care for years to come.
