Dr. Andrea Hayes Jordan is a professor of pediatric surgery and surgical oncology at the University of North Carolina Children’s Hospital. She is the Surgeon-in-Chief of the UNC Children’s hospital and the division chief of pediatric surgery at UNC. Dr. Hayes-Jordan has a basic science laboratory which focuses on rare sarcomas and also maintains a clinical research efforts. She specializes in refractory and resistant tumors and children and specifically soft tissue sarcomas and children. Her patient's request her services from around the world because of the rare diseases she investigates. She was previously the section chief of pediatric surgery at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center.
She was born in Los Angeles California 1965 and moved to Dartmouth College to pursue her secondary education. She continued at Dartmouth medical school. She then moved back to California to complete her residency program at the University Of California Davis East Bay, under the tutelage of Dr. Claude Organ Jr. MD. She completed a molecular biology fellowship at the University of California San Francisco under the direction of Drs. Michael Germann and Douglas Hanahan. She then went on to complete a pediatric surgical oncology fellowship at the St. Jude's children's research Hospital in Memphis Tennessee. Dr. Hayes Jordan continued her academic proceeds by completing a pediatric surgery fellowship at the acclaimed Toronto Hospital for Sick Children. She also completed a special fellowship in melanoma and sarcoma at the University Of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center.
After she was recruited back to M.D. Anderson cancer Center, she began her academic pursuits after being awarded a Grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as a Harold Amos Scholar. This allowed her to find her research and Ewing's sarcoma lung metastasis and angiogenesis. She developed the first orthotopic xenograft model of metastatic Ewing's sarcoma. She simultaneously conducted clinical research and completed the first cytoreductive surgery and hyperthermic intraperitoneal chemotherapy HIPEC, for children with sarcomatosis. She completed a phase I trial and established the safe dose of chemotherapy to be delivered in HIPEC.
She has continued to impact the field of sarcoma and sarcomatosis by amassing the largest number of desmoplastic small round cell tumor DSRCT, patient's at any one hospital and by any one surgeon. DSRCT is a rare disease for which she has improved a survival from 30% to 60% based on complete removal of 100s of intra-abdominal tumor implants and HIPEC. She continues to receive philanthropic funding for her unique research.
Dr. Hayes-Jordan has served on the executive committee of the children's oncology group sarcoma community for the past 10 years this position is shared by only 2 other pediatric surgeons in the country. She has earned membership into the American Surgical Association and has served as chair of the cancer committee for the American Pediatric Surgical Association. She has also been selected to the pediatric disease query PDQ, a national committee that vets every publication on pediatric cancer and summarizes it on the national Institute of health website. She has also served as the program chair for the Society of black academic surgeons and is a governor of the American College of surgeons.
Dr. Hayes-Jordan is the first African American female pediatric surgeon in the United States of America. She has been featured and her local TV and printed news on many occasions including being recognized in the 'Houston Woman' magazine. She continues to be active and involved in mentorship for young surgeons interested in an academic career. She has been a wife to Darin Jordan for over 25 years and has one daughter, Jenelle and one son, Jonah. She enjoys participating in church activities such as medical mission trips and supporting her United Methodist Church orphanage in Kenya.