Innovations in End-of-Life Care
an international journal of leaders in end-of-life care

LaVera M. Crawley, MD

Dr. LaVera Crawley is a lecturer at the Stanford University School of Medicine where she completed a research ethics fellowship at the University's Center for Biomedical Ethics. She received the Soros Faculty Scholars Award (1999-2001) for the Open Society Institute's Project on Death in America, which supported her project on developing and implementing a series of continuing education programs on end-of-life care to educate African American physicians. A graduate of Meharry Medical College, Dr. Crawley completed a residency in Family Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. She has practiced medicine in the Indian Health Service and has published on her experience in providing culturally sensitive prenatal care on the Navajo reservation. Additionally, Dr. Crawley is interested in medical humanities and narrative inquiry as methodological approaches to bioethics, research, and medical care.

Dr. Crawley represents the Center for Biomedical Ethics on the Stanford University School of Medicine General Clinical Research Center Pediatric Protocol Review Committee. In addition, Dr. Crawley directs the Center's study on Race/Ethnicity and Trust in the Doctor-Patient Relationship in collaboration with the UCSF Medical Effectiveness Research Center Program Project on Promoting Effective Communication and Decision Making for Diverse Populations. She has published on the relationship between African Americans and trust in Volume 2 of the Association of American Medical Colleges' Task Force on Clinical Research monograph, For the Health of the Public: Ensuring the Future of Clinical Research.

Dr. Crawley is also the Interim Executive Director of the Initiative to Improve Palliative and End-of-Life Care in the African American Community. This is a national interdisciplinary working group of African American scholars and professionals who are defining the research, education, and policy agenda for the improvement of end-of-life care for African American patients facing death. The group seeks to delineate historical, social, cultural, ethical, economic, legal, health policy, and medical issues that appear to affect African Americans' attitudes toward, acceptance of, access to, and utilization of palliative care and hospice services. Dr. Crawley was also the lead author of the article on this subject for the special Journal of the American Medical Association issue on the end of life in 2000. She also serves on national advisory committees for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Last Acts campaign, the Americans for Better Care of the Dying, and the National Medical Association Division of Biomedical Education and Research.

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