Elliot Wakeam MD, MPH

Dr. Wakeam attended medical school at Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia, graduating magna cum laude, and was elected to the National Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. He then returned to Toronto for general surgical and thoracic surgical training. While a general surgery resident, he pursued a master's degree in public health (MPH) from Harvard and a surgical outcomes research fellowship at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in the Center for Surgery and Public Health. During his general surgery residency, he was awarded the Resident Mentor Award, given to the best resident mentor and role model in the graduating resident class. Following his general thoracic fellowship training, he undertook additional sub-specialty training in lung transplantation as a fellow in the Toronto Lung Transplant Program at Toronto General Hospital.

After training, Dr. Wakeam joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in 2019 as an assistant professor in the Section of Thoracic Surgery. While at the University of Michigan, he maintained a busy general thoracic practice with a focus on foregut surgery as part of the University of Michigan Foregut Program, one of the largest in the United States. In his second year of practice, he was appointed the surgical director of the Michigan lung transplant program. He also founded and co-led the multidisciplinary Michigan Complex Airway Intervention Program (M-AIR), a multidisciplinary program to treat complex airway disease.

At UHN, he practices minimally invasive general thoracic surgery with a focus on esophageal and airway surgery and will participate in the Toronto lung transplant program at TGH. His research interests are in the development of clinical trials in lung transplant and thoracic oncology, quality improvement, and health policy and quality measurement in lung transplantation.