|
 Dr. Lynn is a geriatrician and is the Director of The Washington Home Center for Palliative Care Studies
and a Senior Researcher at RAND. The Center is a multi-disciplinary center for research and education
aimed at improving the care of seriously ill persons. The Center's faculty has recently authored two books.
Improving Care at the End of Life: A Sourcebook for Managers and Clinicians,
The Handbook for Mortals: Guidance for People Facing Serious Illness (Oxford University Press and WWW.Medicaring.org),
and two shorter works: Promises to Keep,
which provides stories of successful provider organizations, and
Living Well at the End of Life: Adapting Health Care to Serve Serious Chronic Illness in Old Age,
which provides guidance for upcoming debates over public policy.
Dr. Lynn was Project Director of the President's Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine
and Biomedical and Behavioral Research and principal writer of that Commission's book,
Deciding to Forego Life-Sustaining Treatment. Dr. Lynn was Co-Director of SUPPORT, the Study to Understand
Prognoses and Preferences for Outcomes and Risks of Treatments. SUPPORT studied the course of illness
and treatment for ten thousand seriously ill hospitalized persons and implemented an intervention to
improve decision-making and produced more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles. Dr. Lynn is a former medical
director of The Washington Home and Hospice of Washington. She was elected to the Institute of Medicine in 1996.
She also served as Chair for ten Breakthrough Collaboratives to Improve End-of-Life Care, in conjunction with the
Institute for Healthcare Improvement. These collaboratives supported a diverse set of almost one hundred health
care provider institutions, most of which accomplished rapid quality improvement in their own settings.
She has written book chapters in many geriatrics textbooks as well as articles in lay and professional journals.
She speaks frequently to groups concerning how to encourage meaningful lives for persons with severe illness and
how to measure quality of end-of-life services. The print and broadcast media often request Dr. Lynn's comments on
issues such as Medicare reform proposals, care at the end of life, and physician-assisted suicide. In addition,
Dr. Lynn is president of the public interest organization, Americans for Better Care of the Dying (ABCD).
ABCD is a non-profit organization that promotes public understanding and coalitions across organizations
to improve end of life care.
|