Victoria Lai-Yen Tang, MD, MAS

Biography

Dr. Tang is a clinician-researcher who is a national leader in improving the lives of older adults in the surgical setting. Dr. Tang received her MD from University of Texas-Southwestern in 2005. She completed a residency in Internal Medicine and a Clinical Geriatrics Fellowship at UT-Southwestern and research training and Master’s in Clinical Research at the University of California, San Francisco and the San Francisco VA Medical Center. After her fellowship, she joined UCSF’s faculty in 2017 and was recruited to UTHealth Houston in 2024. Dr. Tang is currently an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine and holds the Roy M. and Phyllis Gough Huffington Chair in Gerontology in the Joan and Stanford Alexander Division of Geriatric and Palliative Medicine at the University of Texas Health – Houston, School of Medicine.

Dr. Tang is an internationally known expert in geriatric surgical care and research. Dr. Tang’s expertise has helped develop geriatric-specific guidelines across multiple disciplines, such as with the American Society of Anesthesiologists and the American College of Surgeons. Her expertise has also helped develop the first geriatric surgical verification program in the nation. Dr. Tang’s research has been featured in high-impact journals, including JAMA-Internal Medicine, JAMA-Surgery, and Annals of Surgery, and in the public media, including the New York Times and USA Today.

Dr. Tang’s research has garnered local and national support through generous grant funding. Most recently, Dr. Tang received the prestigious aging leadership award, NIH/NIA K76 Beeson Award, which identifies leaders in aging research. Dr. Tang’s overall objective of her current research is to understand the psychosocial experience of older surgical patients and caregivers and to develop and pilot test a psychosocial intervention to improve depressive symptoms, coping skills, and social support in older surgical patients. The central hypothesis of this project is that with a greater understanding of the psychosocial experience and interventions designed to mitigate the effects of psychosocial vulnerability, post-operative outcomes, such as physical function and quality of life, will improve.

Dr. Tang is committed to building supportive communities that promote continuing self-development and leadership in trainees and junior faculty. At UCSF, Dr. Tang was the Director of Career Development for Wellness within the Division of Geriatrics. With her research and mentoring expertise, she built and led a community of junior researchers within the geriatrics division (Early Division of Geriatrics Investigators — EDGI). EDGI supports junior aging researchers with peer-mentoring, leadership development, and representation within the larger research community. In addition, Dr. Tang has also served as the Program Director of the VA Quality Scholars Program, dedicated to developing future healthcare leaders within the VA system. At UTHH, she continues to mentor trainees, such as MSTAR students and those pursuing a geriatric scholarly concentration at the McGovern Medical School, and serves as an aging research expert and T32 mentor for the Department of Anesthesiology.