Chronic conditions such as HIV, cancer, heart and lung diseases, Alzheimer’s Disease and related dementias result in a high burden of symptoms and suffering. Funded faculty are working on groundbreaking solutions to understand the best ways to assist people to assess and manage their conditions to increase overall quality of life and to understand how social and behavioral determinants of heath affect care and care delivery thus ensuring equitable care for all.

Supportive and palliative care refers to a broad area that seeks to understand and improve the person’s illness experience. Our researchers are leading the way in developing comprehensive approaches to caring for people with serious illness across the lifespan by focusing on whole person care; addressing the physical, emotional, social and spiritual suffering of disease; and working to ensure equitable care for all.

Caregiving research stretches across the more than 43 million unpaid lay caregivers, nurses, and other health care professionals and emphasizes the importance of understanding patient and community needs. We are developing innovative solutions to advance the science of caregiving across the lifespan and across care settings. High impact interventions rely on raising the voices of the community and addressing the relevant social, economic, health and policy issues to improve the lives of patients, family caregivers and professional practitioners.

Health systems and improvement science seeks to transform care delivery, practice and education to optimize clinical and operational outcomes. It encompasses health services, quality and safety, occupational health, workforce, technology and informatics. This focus considers diverse populations, the health care continuum and academic-clinical partnerships. The underlying framework is designing, implementing and evaluating care systems that recognize cultural diversity, inclusion, equity and belonging.