Areej El-Jawahri, MD - Course Director
Director of BMT Survivorship Program,
Associate Director of the Cancer Outcomes Research and Education Program (CORE),
Massachusetts General Hospital;
Director of Digital Health,
Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center;
Associate Professor of Medicine,
Harvard Medical School

Dr. El-Jawahri graduated from Harvard Medical School and completed her residency training at Massachusetts General Hospital. She subsequently completed her hematology-oncology fellowship at the Dana-Farber Harvard Cancer Center Fellowship Program. Dr. El-Jawahri is an oncologist specializing in the care of patients with hematologic malignancies and those undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation and adoptive cellular therapy. Her goal is to improve the lived experience of patients with hematologic malignancies and their families. Her research interests include investigating patient-reported outcomes, developing interventions to enhance patient-centered decision-making, and designing supportive, palliative, and digital health interventions to improve the care of patients with hematologic malignancies and their families. She serves as the Director of the Blood and Marrow Transplant Survivorship Program, the Associate Director of the Cancer Outcomes Research and Education Program (CORE), and the Director of Digital Health at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Vicki Jackson, MD, MPH
Blum Family Endowed Chair in Palliative Care,
Chief of the Division of Palliative Care and Geriatric Medicine,
Massachusetts General Hospital;
Professor in the Department of Medicine,
Harvard Medical School

Dr. Jackson is the Blum Family Endowed Chair in Palliative Care and the Chief of the Division of Palliative Care and Geriatric Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Professor in the Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.  She also serves as the Co-Director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Palliative Care. She was the founding Director for the Harvard Palliative Medicine Fellowship. She completed residency and chief residency in Internal Medicine at The Cambridge Hospital, Harvard Medical School. She pursued training in research methods through the Harvard General Medicine Fellowship and completed a Master’s in Public Health at The Harvard School of Public Health. She completed fellowship training in palliative care at The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Dr. Jackson is the Palliative Care lead investigator and mentor on numerous studies funded through NIH, NCI, and PCORI, investigating the effect of early, integrated palliative care for patients with advanced cancer. In 2019, she was the recipient of the prestigious Harvard Medical School A. Clifford Barger mentoring award. She is the co-author of the book Living with Cancer: A step-by-step guide to coping medically and emotionally with a serious diagnosis, published by Johns Hopkins University Press and What’s in the syringe? Principles of early Integrated Palliative Care published by Oxford University Press. Nationally she has served as a member of the Board currently serves as secretary for the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Vicki is married to a lovely endocrinologist named Phil who has a special love for the adrenal gland. She has two teenagers Hannah and Sam and a golden retriever named Millie and a very large (some might say overweight) cat named Toby. She is originally from a small town in Northern Wisconsin.

Joanna (Jo) Paladino, MD
Associate Director of Research and Implementation for the Serious Illness Care Program,
Ariadne Labs

Joanna (Jo) Paladino, MD is the Associate Director of Research and Implementation for the Serious Illness Care Program at Ariadne Labs, a joint health system innovation center at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Brigham and Women's Hospital. She has been involved in the development, testing, and dissemination of an evidence-based care delivery intervention (Serious Illness Care Program) that includes communication tools, clinician training, and system-changes. Her research focuses on the effects of the intervention on communication access and quality, patient and clinician experience, and patient-reported outcomes. Dr. Paladino also helps lead a national implementation and dissemination program to spread evidence-based practices in serious illness conversations through institutional culture change, clinician training, and quality improvement. She teaches Harvard CE-credited courses in communication skills, train-the-trainer, and implementation. Dr. Paladino is board certified in internal medicine and palliative care and lives with her husband and son in Boston, Massachusetts

Alison R. Kavanaugh, MSN, ACNP-BC, ACHPN
Inpatient Nurse Practitioner Lead,
Division of Palliative Care and Geriatric Medicine,
Massachusetts General Hospital

Ali is the Nurse Practitioner Lead for the Massachusetts General Hospital inpatient palliative care consult service. She is a graduate of Colgate University and earned her Bachelor of Science in Nursing and Master of Science in Nursing at the MGH Institute of Health Professions. Ali completed the Harvard Interprofessional Palliative Care Fellowship program, and is board certified in both Acute Care and Hospice & Palliative Care. She has a particular interest in the care of patients with cancer and their families and is part of a research team investigating the integration of palliative care services for patients with hematologic malignancies and those undergoing hematopoietic stem cell transplantation.