Ishwaria Subbiah, an Indian American physician leader in supportive and palliative care has joined NYU Langone Health’s Perlmutter Cancer Center as director of the Symptom Management Program for hematology and medical oncology.
Dr. Subbiah, specializing in symptom management and quality of life for patients with cancer, will also serve as associate professor in the Department of Medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine.
An integrative oncology specialist, she works with patients to optimize quality of life through evidence-based approaches, including medications and behavioral and lifestyle changes to manage the side effects of cancer treatment, according to a university release.
“Ishwaria’s deep experience in clinical trials and symptom management is valuable to the work we’re doing at Perlmutter Cancer Center to translate scientific discoveries into individualized patient care,” said Anirban Maitra, director of Perlmutter Cancer Center. “As more people are living with cancer than ever before, ensuring that they have the highest quality of life is our utmost priority.”
In her new role, Dr. Subbiah will be a leader in research efforts evaluating new approaches to reduce the burden of side effects so patients can live full lives.
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She will also contribute to the development, implementation, and continuous evaluation of evidence-based innovative clinical pathways for common side effects—including pain, fatigue, nausea, neuropathy, and other treatment toxicities—that impact patients’ ability to receive and remain on cancer treatment, with the goal of informing approaches that minimize these effects.
Dr. Subbiah said NYU Langone’s commitment “to getting things done at a steady pace” allows it “to turn innovation into action and pair cutting-edge treatments with holistic supportive care to deliver a truly person-centered cancer care experience.”
Dr. Subbiah brings over 16 years of experience in direct patient care, along with progressive scientific and leadership responsibilities building enterprise-wide programs for in-treatment toxicity management, whole-person symptom optimization, clinical trial access, and workforce well-being.
Prior to joining NYU Langone, Dr. Subbiah was an associate professor at MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she provided comprehensive symptom management care for patients with cancer. She led research initiatives examining the barriers to clinical trial participation among older adults and the physical and psychosocial burden of symptoms.
Dr. Subbiah spearheaded the launch of the electronic-health-record-
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Among other achievements, she developed a clinical trial access strategy and a supportive and palliative care implementation road map for a national network serving more than 1.4 million patients across more than 2,700 providers.
Dr. Subbiah chairs the Health Services Research Committee for the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), serves on ASCO’s Supportive Care Guidelines Advisory Group and the European Society for Medical Oncology’s Digital Education Committee, and is past chair of ASCO’s State of Cancer Care in America initiative.
She designed, secured external funding for, and implemented prospective trials studying the impact of technology-enabled programs on patient symptom burden and the likelihood of clinical trial participation. She served as principal investigator, co-investigator, or collaborator on more than 50 clinical trials and as lead or co-author on 78 publications, including 73 peer-reviewed original research articles on treatment, patient outcomes, and well-being.
Dr. Subbiah also led several multisite, multi-investigator grant submissions to external funders and secured multiyear, peer-reviewed funding from the American Cancer Society, the Andrew Sabin Family Foundation, the Hope Foundation, and Gabrielle’s Angel Foundation, according to the release.