Yancy is a native of Louisiana and earned a medical degree from Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans. He completed an internship and residency in internal medicine at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas.  He completed his fellowship in cardiology at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. He received his initial faculty appointment in 1989 and held a position on the faculty at UT Southwestern Medical Center for 17 years where he ascended to the rank of professor of medicine. Concurrently, he was holder of the Carl Westcott Distinguished Chair in Medical Research, associate dean for Clinical Affairs and medical director of the Heart Failure/Heart Transplant Program.

He is board certified in internal medicine with a subspecialty in cardiovascular disease.  He is a Fellow of the American College of Cardiology, a Fellow of the American Heart Association and a Fellow of the American College of Physicians. He is also a member of several other medical societies, including the International Society of Heart and Lung Transplantation, the American Society of Hypertension, Heart Failure Society of America and the Association of Black Cardiologists. He currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Heart Failure Society of America, and is a past chair the Council of Clinical Cardiology’s Heart Failure and Transplantation Sub-Committee of the American Heart Association.  Yancy has served two terms on the national Board of Directors for the American Heart Association and was recognized as the American Heart Association National Physician of the Year in 2003.  He sits on the ACC/AHA Guideline Writing Committee for chronic heart failure; has held consulting positions with the CDC and the Veteran’s Affairs Medical Centers; is currently a consultant with the National Institutes of Health and is chair of the FDA’s cardiovascular device panel.

Yancy is broadly published in the area of heart failure, with more than 100 manuscripts, editorials and book chapters to his credit. He has an established presence in Web-based educational media and is a national spokesperson for the American Heart Association.  He holds several editorial positions including an associate editorship for the American Journal of Cardiology; associate editorial board for Congestive Heart Failure; and editorial board membership for The American Heart Journal and for Circulation.   He is a reviewer for all of the major cardiovascular journals.

His research interests include the broad areas of clinical congestive heart failure and heart transplantation.  He is published in the areas of: exercise pathophysiology in congestive heart failure and heart transplant recipients; the use of inotropes, vasodilators and beta blockers in congestive heart failure; skeletal muscle dysfunction in congestive heart failure; appropriate candidate selection for cardiac transplantation; and the impact of alternative immunosuppressive regimens after cardiac transplantation.  Recently, he has focused on the emerging role of registries in cardiovascular diseases, management of advanced heart failure with new drugs and devices, therapeutic uses of natriuretic peptides, and on heart failure in special populations, especially African Americans. He's also involved in ongoing efforts to identify and correct disparate health care in special populations.