Research

Our Mission

Our center understands the most pressing issues for the aging and seriously ill.

And The Center motto, “Putting Research into Action” guides our mission to generate knowledge, techniques, and tools to improve medical care as well as address and ease the challenges that family and friends face when a loved one is seriously ill.

Our Research

The Center works in conjunction with diverse sets of medical and academic institutions around the world to conduct primary research in the field of end-of-life medical communication, decision-making, comparative effectiveness, and care.

Our Goals

Our work seeks to:

• Address ways to improve terminally ill patients’ and family caregivers’ prognostic understanding and knowledge of the intent and possible outcomes of treatments
• Reduce racial and ethnic disparities in EoL care
• Examine patient and family values, treatment preferences, physical and emotional and spiritual needs and suffering in order to promote whole patient care
• Promote advance care planning to ensure patients receive care consistent with their informed preferences
• Promote shared, patient-centered medical decision-making near death
• Conduct comparative effectiveness analyses of palliative treatments (including palliative chemotherapy and radiation)
• Reduce anxiety, depression and grief in patients and their caregivers
• Conduct cost-effectiveness analyses to determine not just the costs, but the quality of life of any “extra time” bought by medical interventions