The Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine has a long history of excellence in palliative care research integrated with pulmonary and critical care medicine. Dr. J. Randall Curtis, a former faculty member and a pioneer in the field, was an outstanding mentor who developed and led a robust research program at the that now thrives with many faculty members leading their own research programs focused on the care of seriously ill patients and their family members. Dr. Curtis was the founding director of the Cambia Palliative Care Center of Excellence. Founded in 2012, and administered within our Division, the Cambia PCCE strives to improve palliative care for all people of all ages with serious illness and for their families by integrating research, education, and clinical care. Dr. Erin Kross is the current director of the Cambia PCCE and Dr. Danae Dotolo is the Director of Research. In addition to the core faculty within our Division, researchers at the Cambia PCCE include those from across the University of Washington, including nursing, neurology, cardiology, nephrology, oncology, anesthesiology and pain medicine, and general internal medicine. The Cambia PCCE hosts monthly palliative care research works-in-progress meetings that bring this interprofessional group together to share work. In addition, Dr. Dotolo hosts a monthly qualitative research methods works-in-progress meeting as an additional training platform for those interested in developing deeper experience and expertise in qualitative and mixed research methods.
Faculty
Director, Cambia Palliative Care Center of Excellence
Dr. Erin Kross directs the Cambia Palliative Care Center of Excellence at UW Medicine. Her research program focuses on improving palliative care and communication for patients with acute and chronic serious illnesses and their family members. She has been PI or MPI of 3 R01 awards, including two large pragmatic trials of a communication priming intervention (“Jumpstart”) to promote and improve communication about goals of care between clinicians and patients. The first of these trials took place in the acute care setting and the most recent trial, which is ongoing, is focused on patients living with dementia receiving care in the primary care setting. Prior awards, including her K23 and first R01, focused on psychological outcomes for patients and family members after critical illness. In addition, Dr. Kross is the Program Director for an NHLBI-funded T32 focused on palliative care research (program ending in late 2025).
Dr. Danae Dotolo is a Research Assistant Professor in the Division and an Adjunct Research Assistant Professor in the UW School of Social Work. She is a transdisciplinary scholar trained in bioethics and social work with a focus on social inequities in health with a focus on enhancing equitable and patient-centered communication in palliative and critical care, as well as care for dementia and other serious illnesses. She has applied her expertise in qualitative research methods to studies focused on interventions to improve goal-concordant care for patients living with serious illnesses; better understanding experiences of financial hardship after critical care hospitalizations; and examining the perspectives of healthcare workers on the palliative care needs of people who prefer a language other than English and who are living with dementia and cancer. She teaches a doctoral course in qualitative research methods, and mentors graduate students and physician fellows on qualitative data collection and analysis.
Dr. Crystal Brown’s research program focuses on understanding racial inequities in serious illness and at the end of life. As a trained medical ethicist and restorative justice facilitator her research seeks to address systemic racism as a cause of healthcare disparities. She utilizes mixed-methods and a framework directed approach to understand and address both provider and patient experiences of discrimination and medical mistrust in the ICU setting. She is currently funded by the Harold Amos Medical Faculty Development Program (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) and the Greenwall Foundation.
Dr. Ann Jennerich’s research focused on the quality of care and communication provided to seriously ill patients and their family members, with a specific interest in transitions of care. She is currently supported by an NHLBI R01 and has experience as principal investigator on several other awards including an NHLBI K23, a clinical research award from the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, a Junior Faculty Career Development Award from the National Palliative Care Research Center, and a pilot award from the Palliative Care Research Cooperative.
Whitney Kiker, MD
Dr. Whitney Kiker’s research focuses on communication and support of patients and families in the setting of critical illness. She has particular interest in how patients, families, and clinicians communicate about prognosis and achieve goal-concordant care in the ICU. She recently completed an NHLBI F32 award focused on evaluating the role of specialty palliative care in supporting patients receiving extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) therapy and their families.
Dr. Robert “Bob” Lee’s primary research interests include improving communication about goals of care for patients hospitalized with serious illness; implementation of palliative care best-practices in the intensive care unit; and, using natural language processing (NLP) and large language models (LLMs) to identify and characterize clinician-documented serious illness conversations in electronic health records. Dr. Lee is funded by a K23 award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) and previously was funded by an NHLBI K12 award and F32 award.
Dr. Lauren Pollack’s research is focused on improving care for older adults with acute critical illness and chronic respiratory conditions with the goal of improving goal-concordant care. She is currently studying crisis communication and decision-making about advanced life support for older adults with chronic life-limiting illness during 911 response and has funding from the Alzheimer’s Association and the NIA Research Centers Collaborative Network.
Together, this body of work reflects our Division’s strong and sustained commitment to ensuring that critical care aligns with the values, goals, and needs of patients and their loved ones.