Interdisciplinary researcher

I am an Associate Professor in the UCSF School of Medicine, core faculty in the Division of Geriatrics and the Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies (IHPS), and an Atlantic Senior Fellow for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute. I co-lead the Vulnerable Aging Research Core within the UCSF Claude D. Pepper Older American Independence Center. My research focuses primarily on identifying and meeting needs of people with dementia and care partners, care provided by hospice and home-based palliative care, and policies that support care systems.

My doctoral and graduate training includes public health, health policy, ethics, health services research, implementation science, brain science, aging research, hospice and palliative care. My career path has taken me from mouse bench research, to think-tank policy research, to a PhD, to community-based research and leadership at a non-profit hospice, to academia.

My professional expertise collided with personal life when my father, then stepfather, then uncle, then cousin, then aunt, along with several friends, died over the course of two years. This period of tragedy began just after starting my second year on faculty and when my son turned two.