Ira Leeds

Dr. Ira Leeds is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Surgery's Division of Colon & Rectal Surgery at Yale School of Medicine, with a secondary appointment as Assistant Professor in Biomedical Informatics & Data Science. He is also a Clinical Member of the Cancer Prevention and Control Program at Yale Cancer Center and serves as a Clinical Fellow at the Department of Veterans Affairs' Clinical Epidemiology Research Center.

Dr. Leeds earned his AB in Politics from Princeton University (2006), MBA from University of Oxford (2012), and MD from Emory University (2013). He completed his surgical training at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, where he also earned an ScM in Clinical Investigation (2018), and finished subspecialty training in colon and rectal surgery at the Cleveland Clinic (2021). He is board certified in both General Surgery (2023) and Colon and Rectal Surgery (2022).

His research focuses on preoperative decision-making between surgeons and patients, particularly identifying where inputs and outputs of these decisions don't align with patient, surgeon, and societal goals. His work examines how signal noise in patient histories and clinical data combined with clinical atmospheres impairs effective shared decision-making. He develops interventions like data visualization schemes, clinical decision support tools, and rapid psychosocial assessment techniques to improve decision quality, with emphasis on high-morbidity diseases like colorectal cancer and inflammatory bowel disease.

His recent publication output shows a strong focus on cost-effectiveness analyses, social determinants of health, and psychosocial factors affecting surgical outcomes. His work spans multiple disciplines including surgical oncology, health economics, and public health, with particular attention to vulnerable patient populations and long-term cancer survivorship.

• VA Research Award for AI, Housing Study (2024)

Dr. Leeds leads a clinical research lab focused on identifying and optimizing modifiable risk factors of abdominal surgery. His collaborations span multiple institutions, with frequent co-authors including Haddon Pantel, Kurt Schultz, Anne Mongiu, and Vikram Reddy. He emphasizes the importance of shared decision-making with patients, particularly for complex cases involving inflammatory bowel disease and rectal cancer, stating that 'pelvic anatomy is one of the few areas of the body where both surgical approaches and function require a true three-dimensional awareness and understanding.'

His clinical practice broadly covers benign and malignant diseases of the colon, rectum, and anus. He particularly enjoys helping patients work through difficult re-operative decision-making and determining the optimal surgical approach (endoscopic, open, laparoscopic, or robotic surgery) for each individual case.