Diane E. Meier, MD, FACP, is the 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. Dr. 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, and the Alexander Richman Commemorative Award for Humanism in Medicine. She is the recipient of a five-year NIA Academic Career Leadership Award and is Principal Investigator of an NCI-funded five-year multisided study on the outcomes of hospital palliative care services in cancer patients.

R. Sean Morrison, MD, is the Director of the National Palliative Care Research Center, the Hermann Merkin Professor of Palliative Care, Professor of Geriatrics and Medicine, and Vice-Chair for Research in the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY. Dr. Morrison received his BS from Brown University and his MD from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine. He completed his residency training in internal medicine at the New York Hospital Cornell Medical Center and fellowship training in geriatrics at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Since 1995 he has been on the faculty of Mount Sinai School of Medicine where he established the Acute Care for the Elderly Unit and served as its director from 1995 – 1997. Dr. Morrison has received numerous awards for his research in geriatrics and palliative care and has published over one hundred articles related in these fields. His research focuses on decision making at the end of life, pain and symptom management in high risk and medically underserved populations, and quality measures in palliative care. He is an active clinician who cares for both healthy older adults and for persons living with serious and life threatening illness. Dr. Morrison was featured on the Bill Moyers PBS series On Our Own Terms and is a frequent commentator on issues related to palliative care and geriatrics in the national media.

Lynn Hill Spragens, MBA, is President/CEO of Spragens & Associates, LLC, based in Durham, North Carolina. Ms. Spragens is a health care business consultant who, prior to founding her firm, spent ten years as an executive within an integrated health system. Since 1998 Ms. Spragens has provided business and operations consultation to non-profit and health care organizations across the nation. For the past six years she has devoted a considerable amount of her consulting efforts to the support of palliative care initiatives through the Center to Advance Palliative Care, and works individually with palliative care programs at various stages of implementation and development. Ms. Spragens has executive-level skills in project management, strategic planning and process improvement, and specializes in bridging the goals of clinical innovation and business strategy.

David Weissman, MD, FACP, is Professor of Internal Medicine and Director of the Medical College of Wisconsin Palliative Care Center. He is board certified in medical oncology, hospice and palliative medicine. In 1995 Dr. Weissman was awarded a Faculty Scholar Award in Death Education from the Project on Death in America. From 1997 to 2004, Dr. Weissman directed the National Residency End-of-Life Education Project, helping 400 residency programs develop a palliative care curriculum. He is co-director of EPERC (End-of-Life Palliative Education Resource Center) and is founding editor of the Journal of Palliative Medicine. Dr. Weissman directs the Medical College of Wisconsin Palliative Care Leadership Center. He serves as a consultant to CAPC to assist in educational program development and strategic planning.

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