Director, Center to Advance Palliative Care
Director, Hertzberg Palliative Care Institute, Mount Sinai School of Medicine
Professor, Geriatrics and Internal Medicine, Mount Sinai School of Medicine

Biography

Dr. Diane E. Meier is Director of the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC), a national organization devoted to increasing the number and quality of palliative care programs in the United States. She is also Director of the Lilian and Benjamin Hertzberg Palliative Care Institute; Professor of Geriatrics and Internal Medicine; and Catherine Gaisman Professor of Medical Ethics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City where she has served on the faculty since 1983.

Meier is the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Institute on Aging Academic Career Leadership Award, the Open Society Institute Faculty Scholar’s Award of the Project on Death in America, the Founders Award of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, and the Alexander Richman Commemorative Award for Humanism in Medicine. She is the recipient of a five-year NIA Academic Career Leadership Award, and she is the Principal Investigator of an NCI-funded five-year multi-site study on the outcomes of hospital palliative care services in cancer patients.

Dr. Meier has published extensively in all major peer-reviewed medical journals, including New England Journal of Medicine and Journal of the American Medical Association. She edited the first textbook on geriatric palliative care, as well as four editions of Geriatric Medicine, and she has contributed to more than 20 books on the subject of geriatrics and palliative care,

As one of the leading figures in the field of palliative medicine, Dr. Meier has appeared numerous times on television and in print, including ABC World News Tonight, Open Mind with Richard Hefner, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, New York Daily News, Newsday, The New Yorker, AARP and Newsweek. She also figured prominently in the Bill Moyers series On Our Own Terms: Dying in America, a four-part documentary aired on PBS.

Diane E. Meier received her BA from Oberlin College and her MD from Northwestern University Medical School. She completed her residency and fellowship training at Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland. She has been on the faculty of the Department of Geriatrics and Adult Development and Department of Medicine at Mount Sinai since 1983.

Selected Publications:

• Meier, DE; Morrison, RS. Palliative Care. New England Journal of Medicine. 2004 (June)
• Meier DE; Thar W; Jordan A; Goldhirsch SL; Siu A; Morrison RS. Integrating case management and palliative care. J Pall Med. 2004; Feb. 7(1):119-134
• Meier DE. When pain and and suffering do not require a prognosis: Working toward meaningful hospital-hospice partnership. J Pall Med. 2003; 6:109-115
• Meier DE, Morrison RS. Autonomy reconsidered. N Engl J Med 2002 Apr 4;346(14):1087-1089
• Meier DE. United States: Overview of cancer pain and palliative care. J Pain Symptom Manage 2002 Aug;24(2):265-269.
• Meier DE. Palliative care programs: what, why, and how?. Physician Exec 2001 Dec;27(6):43-47
• Meier D, Ahronheim JC, Morris J, Baskin-Lyons S, Morrison R. High short-term mortality in hospitalized patients with advanced dementia: lack of benefit of tube feeding. Arch Intern Med 2001 Feb 26;161(4):594-9
• Meier DE, Back AL, Morrison RS. The inner life of physicians and care of the seriously ill. JAMA 2001 Dec 19;286(23):3007-3014
• Nierman DM, Schechter CB, Cannon LM, Meier DE. Outcome prediction model for very elderly critically ill patients. Crit Care Med 2001 Oct;29(10):1853-1859
• Carney MT, Meier DE. Palliative care and end-of-life issues. Anesthesiol Clin North America 2000 Mar;18(1):183-209
• Morrison R, Siu A, Leipzig R, Cassel C, Meier D. The hard task of improving the quality of care at the end of life. Arch Intern Med 2000 Mar 27;160(6):743-7
• Manfredi PL, Morrison R, Morris J, Goldhirsch S, Carter J, Meier D. Palliative care consultations: how do they impact the care of hospitalized patients?. J Pain Symptom Manage 2000 Sep;20(3):166-73