Lionel Bañez is the Acting Associate Director for the Evidence-based Practice Center Division. A physician, he also serves as Project Officer for evidence reviews conducted under the Evidence-based Practice Center master contract. In this capacity, he works with contractors to produce systematic reviews with partners who use AHRQ products to develop practice guidelines and inform research agendas and coverage decisions. He provides oversight for the Systematic Review Data Repository and serves as program officer for several grant-funded studies that focus on improving evidence synthesis methodology.

Dr. Bañez earned his doctor of medicine degree from the University of the Philippines and underwent general surgery training at the Philippine General Hospital. He also completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Prostate Disease Research (CPDR) of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) focusing on translational cancer research, and a clinical research fellowship at Duke University focusing on prostate cancer epidemiology, biomarkers, and health disparities. Prior to joining AHRQ, Dr. Bañez was a program director at the Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities of the National Cancer Institute at the National Institutes of Health, an assistant professor in the Division of Urology in the Department of Surgery at Duke University Medical Center, and a staff scientist at CPDR-USUHS.