Holly Prigerson, PhD, is the Irving Sherwood Wright Professor of Geriatrics at Weill Cornell Medical College, Professor of Sociology in Medicine, and Director of the Cornell University Center for Research on End-of-Life Care. Dr. Prigerson graduated magna cum laude from Columbia (Barnard) where she received awards for proficiency in U.S. History and Spanish. She has graduate degrees in History and Sociology from Stanford, was a postdoctoral fellow in the epidemiology of aging at Yale, and received an honorary master’s degree from Harvard. She was approved for tenure as a faculty member at Yale and Harvard Medical School (HMS); she was recently promoted to Professor of Psychiatry at HMS. The theme of her research across studies has been on examining psychosocial and behavioral influences on medical care and care outcomes for patients and families confronting life-threatening illnesses and death. She was funded by NIH to conduct field trials of consensus criteria for Prolonged Grief Disorder. These studies served as the basis for inclusion of this new mental disorder in the forthcoming ICD-11. Dr. Prigerson has served as Principal Investigator on multiple NIH investigations that focus on cancer patient and caregiver quality of life and disparities in end-of-life care. Dr. Prigerson has been the senior author on several landmark studies including a study of the stages of grief, outcomes of end-of-life communication and the effects of religious coping on medical decision-making and care near death that were published in JAMA, New England Journal of Medicine, Journal of Clinical Oncology, JAMA Internal Medicine, and Cancer. She received the Harvard Medical School’s Clifford Barger Excellence in Mentoring Award recognizing her mentorship of numerous PhD and MD junior faculty in launching successful research careers in the field of psychosocial oncology and cancer outcomes research, and the 2012 National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization’s Distinguished End of Life Researcher Award. She was awarded NCI’s Outstanding Investigator Award (2015-2022).

Dr. Soloway is a board-certified family physician who has practiced and taught family medicine in South Bronx outpatient and inpatient settings since 1988. One of his major interests has been delivery of primary care to HIV-positive patients; in 1991, he co-authored one of the earliest monographs on this subject. He is currently working on developing the patient-centered medical home model of care and integrated mental health services in urban primary care teaching practices. Dr. Soloway served as Associate Editor for NEJM Journal Watch HIV/AIDS Clinical Care from 1991 through 2004, when he joined the editorial board of NEJM Journal Watch General Medicine.

Dr. Colette McAfee is an assistant professor of public health in the School of Nursing and Health Sciences at Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah. She currently teaches a range of diverse coursework in both the undergraduate and graduate public health programs. Dr. McAfee obtained her PhD from the University of Toledo in Health Education, where she focused on research surrounding the use of health behavior theory to explain racial and ethnic disparities in advance care planning. She received her MPH in Health Behavior and Health Education, as well as her BA in psychology, from the University of Michigan. Dr. McAfee’s primary research interests include older adult health, end-of-life issues, health disparities, and chronic disease prevention and management. Dr. McAfee also focuses on community health, and has worked on several community health projects in Michigan and Ohio.

Duc Chung, MD completed medical training at University at Buffalo followed by residency in physical medicine and rehabilitation at the UCLA/VA Greater Los Angeles Multicampus Program where he was selected as Chief Resident.  He also completed fellowship training in hospice and palliative care medicine at UCSF Fresno program. He is certified in both PM&R and Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Dr. Chung is currently Section Chief of the VA Central California Healthcare System and an attending physician with Hinds Hospice. He also serves as an assistant clinical professor with the UCSF Fresno Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship, where he is privileged to teach internal medicine residents and fellows. He enjoys clinical research with special interest in racial disparities at the end-of-life with numerous publications in this field. Dr. Chung has a deep passion for the field of hospice and palliative medicine and also currently serves on the AAHPM Public Policy Committee where he helps review and craft new legislation impacting our field.

Dr. Heard-Garris studies adverse experiences in childhood. Dr. Heard-Garris is especially interested in the burden of racism experienced by children of color and their caregivers. She hopes to work on clinical, family, and community-level interventions that promote resilience for children affected by childhood adversity.

After completing my internal medicine residency and chief resident year, I pursued pain and palliative care specialty training via fellowship at the Harvard Palliative Medicine fellowship program. Currently, I treat cancer and non-cancer patients in a racially and ethnically diverse urban population with serious illness and difficult to control pain syndromes in both the inpatient and outpatient settings as a faculty member at a tertiary care center that involves clinical education and creation of palliative medicine curriculum for learners from all backgrounds.   Via development of an outpatient palliative medicine practice, I have begun increasingly complex management of pain syndromes overlapping with substance abuse issues in cancer patients, cancer survivors as well as other patients with complicated, life-limiting diagnoses.  This experience has led to research in the intersection of race and ethnicity in patients with serious illness and how race affects both treatment, choices and healthcare interactions.