Shikha Jain, MD

Dr. Shikha Jain is a board-certified hematology and oncology physician. She is a tenured associate professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology and Oncology at the University of Illinois Cancer Center in Chicago. She is the Director of Communication Strategies in Medicine and the Associate Director of Oncology Communication & Digital Innovation. 

Dr. Jain was named a Rising Star in Medicine by Medscape in 2020 and one of Modern Healthcare's Top 25 Emerging Leaders in 2019, and was also awarded the Rising Star award by the LEAD Oncology Conference in 2019 and nominated in in 2020 as a Women Leader in Oncology.  Dr. Jain was selected as a ResearcHERS ambassador by the American Cancer Society, and was honored by 500 Women in Medicine.  She was appointed by the Science and Technology Directorate of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS S&T) and National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) to the Committee on Addressing Inaccurate and Misleading Information on Biological Threats.  She was appointed to the 2020-2022 American Society for Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Women's Networking Center taskforce, the 2021 ASCO Diversity and Inclusivity Task Force, and appointed to the Council on Communications and Membership Advocacy and the COVID19 taskforce for the the the Illinois State Medical Society. 

She is a founder and CEO of the COVID19 action and advocacy group IMPACT,  founder and Chair of the Women In Medicine Summit, and founder and President of the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Women in Medicine® She founded and co-chaired the inaugural Women In Medicine Symposium at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago in 2018 focused on promoting the advancement of women physicians at Northwestern. She is the co-founder of the Rush Center for the Advancement of Women in Health Care.

Dr. Jain gave a TEDx talk in 2019 on the gender moonshot and the importance of gender parity in healthcare. She has been invited to speak and deliver keynotes nationally and has spoken at the Harvard Medical School Career Advancement and Leadership Skills for Women in Healthcare, the Becker's Healthcare Conference, the American College of Physicians and others. She speaks  on the impact of media and social media on healthcare, ways to demystify cancer care with open communication and education, physician leadership, mentorship, writing in medicine, and gender equity. She has been interviewed on a variety of healthcare and equity topics on local and national tv and radio programming and is a regular contributor to Fox32 News. She writes for several national publications including  US News, The Hill, Scientific American, the Chicago Tribune, Physician's Weekly,  Doximity,  KevinMD, ASCO Connection and others. She was selected as a thought leader by Doximity and completed a year as a Doximity writing fellow. She was also chosen to be a Public Voices fellow as a part of the OpEd project.

Dr. Jain  is on the Doximity Women in Medicine Advisory Board and is the consulting medical editor for Women in Oncology, on the editorial board of Healio HemOnc Today is the host of the podcast Oncology Overdrive by Healio, and the founder and former host of the podcast “The Rush Cast.”  She is the founder of the social media community Dual Physician Families.

Her clinical focus is GI oncology with a special interest in neuroendocrine tumors.  Her research interests include neuroendocrine tumors, immunotherapy, colorectal and pancreatic cancers, hepatocellular carcinoma advances in cancer therapy, the impact of social media and healthcare and gender equity.  Dr. Jain has published in peer-reviewed high impact journals including the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), JAMA and PNAS.

Along with her clinical practice, she tries to incorporate patient education and outreach as often as possible. With the proper tools and guidance, she works with her patients as a team to treat the disease and helps them move through an often difficult process together with as little stress as possible. She believes in personalized and individualized care, and also feels the more knowledge a patient has about their own disease, the more informed a decision they are able to make.