Current
Trainees and Faculty
Other Lab Members
Veronica Dussel
Veronica’s intervention research relates to 1) the use of e-PROs as a facilitator of quality palliative care in children with cancer and 2) understanding the provision of palliative care in Latin America and developing interventions
Christina Ullrich
Dr. Ullrich is currently investigating the palliative care needs and patient-reported outcomes of children who undergo intensive and restorative care such as HSCT.
Ananth Prasanna
Prasanna’s research explores various dimensions of end-of-life care for children with advanced cancer, including hospital resource use, supportive care, and quality.
Madeline Bilodeau
Madeline is interested in the experience of parents receiving results of quality-of-life in pediatric advanced cancer. Additionally, she has examined the household material hardships families have faced post-chemotherapy in their children.
Katie Ratzan Peeler
Katie’s primary research interest is exploring the end-of-life experience of children and families for previously healthy children who die from sudden unexpected causes such as trauma, drowning, ingestion, or fulminant infection.
Angela Feraco
Angela is interested in provider-family communication during the initial months of childhood cancer treatment and the role of medical-psychosocial collaboration in symptom management care for children with cancer.
Jennifer Snaman
Jennifer’s research interests include communication and decision-making in adolescent and young adult patients with advanced cancer and early parental grief following the death of a child from cancer.
Sarah Brand-McCarthy
Dr. McCarthy’s research is focused on improving communication, decision making, and care delivery for children with complex and life limiting medical illnesses.
Katharine Brock
Katharine is interested in training clinicians in primary palliative care and communication using simulation or other novel medical education techniques, and also in studying how we can improve patient outcomes through integrated palliative oncology.
Danielle DeCourcey
Danielle’s research interests are focused on improving care delivery for children with medical complexity as well as communication around advance care planning for children with life-limiting illness.
Erin Currie
Erin is interested in pediatric palliative care consultation and end-of-life care within the neonatal intensive care setting.
Amy Porter
Amy’s research interests are global palliative care (with a focus on sub-Saharan Africa); barriers to palliative care provision in primary care, subspecialty, acute care/ICU, and home-based settings - especially disparities in access.
Sarah Stevens
Sarah earned her B.A. from Harvard College and joined our team in June 2019. She is currently working on various projects related to symptom management and quality of life, patient-provider communication, and medical-psychosocial collaboration.
Ross William Cleveland
Ross’s research interests explore the intersection of child abuse pediatrics and palliative care, including practitioners’ roles in child safety and the effect of child protective services involvement on the experience of severely ill children.
Rachel Deming
Rachel investigates the role of palliative care in the perinatal period, specifically how palliative care can help address unmet needs for chronically critically ill neonates and their families.
Leah Beight
Leah is an MPH student at Northeastern University. She is working on a project focused on psychosocial outcomes and symptom management. She is passionate about patient education and learning about interventions to improve patient outcomes.
Ijeoma Eche
Ijeoma's program of research is to comprehensively improve psychosocial outcomes for parents of children with cancer and health-related quality of life of children diagnosed with cancer throughout the illness trajectory.
Gabrielle Helton
Gabby earned her B.A. from Dartmouth College. She is currently working on various projects related to decision-making in adolescents and young adults, psychosocial outcomes of bereaved parents, and advance care planning.
Emily Johnston
Emily is interested in disparities in end-of-life care, particularly intensity of end-of-life care for oncology patients.
Liliana Orellana
Dr. Orellana leads a team of statisticians, which supports researchers across the Deakin Faculty of Health. She has proposed novel statistical methods in the areas of Robust Statistics and Causal Inference.