Hashem El-Serag

Hashem B. El-Serag is a Palestinian-American physician and medical researcher best known for his research in liver cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and the hepatitis C virus.

El-Serag was born in 1966 in Libya to Palestinian parents from the Gaza Strip. He received his M.D. from Al-Arab Medical University in Benghazi, Libya. He then moved to the United States, where he performed his residency in internal medicine at Yale University Greenwich Hospital (Connecticut) and received a gastroenterology fellowship at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, before earning his Master of Public Health from the University of New Mexico.

Most of the research on Hepatocellular carcinoma in the United States can be attributed to El-Serag, who has published over 350 scholarly papers on the subject. Awards received: GlaxoWellcome Digestive Health Foundation Award for Health Care Advancement in 1997, the American Gastroenterological Association's Young Clinical Investigator Award in 2003, the American Gastroenterological Association's Masters Award in Clinical Research in 2005, the “World Most Influential Scientific Minds” in the area of Clinical Medicine in 2014, the Bin Qurrah Award in 2016, the NAAMA Local Chapter Prestigious Award in 2016, and the 2016 Michael E. DeBakey Excellence in Research Award. Dr. El-Serag was selected as a member of American Society for Clinical Investigator (ASCI) and as a member of American Association of Physicians (AAP). Dr. El-Serag has also become a leading expert on chronic liver disease, and gastroesophageal reflux disease.

He was the Chief of Gastroenterology and Hepatology (2007-2016) at Baylor College of Medicine. He also served as Leader, Cancer Prevention and Population Sciences Program, Dan L. Duncan Cancer Center, and the Chief of Clinical Epidemiology and Outcomes Division at Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center Houston, Texas. In 2017, he was selected to serve as the Margaret M. and Albert B. Alkek Chairman, Department of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. He is funded by multiple research grants such as the National Institutes of Health, the Cancer Prevention Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT), the VA and professional societies. In 2014, he became the Director of the Texas Medical Digestive Disease Center, funded by P-30 NIH Grant and one of only 6 successful centers in the United States. Several of his studies were published in notable journals such as the New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, Archives of Internal Medicine, Gastroenterology, Hepatology, and GUT. The seminal work on HCC, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Rising Incidence of Hepatocellular Carcinoma in the United States, has been cited approximately 3000 times He has a H. index of 113. In addition, he was the Associate Editor of Gastroenterology, the leading specialty journal and Editor-in-Chief of Clinical Gastroenterology and Hepatology (2012-2017).

He was elected as incoming President of the American Gastroenterology Association (2018), the leading professional society for gastroenterologists.