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

Mildred Z. Solomon, EdD (Editor-in-Chief)
Mildred Z. Solomon, EdD is Vice President of Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC), a non-profit research and development organization of 600 professional staff, engaged in 300 health and education projects throughout the United States and in 25 countries. She is also Associate Clinical Professor of Social Medicine and Anaesthesia at Harvard Medical School. At HMS, she directs the Fellowship in Medical Ethics within the Department of Social Medicine. At EDC, she founded and directs its Center for Applied Ethics and Professional Practice, a division focused on the wise and effective use of biomedical technologies. CAEPP is composed of 16 staff, including 7 PhD-prepared and 3 masters-level social scientists engaged in a variety of studies focused on values questions in medicine, ethics education, and health system quality improvement.

An expert in adult learning and medical education, Dr. Solomon has more than 25 years' experience researching, designing and evaluating a wide variety of education and quality improvement programs for health professionals, health care organizations, and the public. With special expertise in bioethics education and palliative care ethics, she co-founded the Decisions Near the End of Life program, which has helped more than 230 health care institutions in 32 states improve the care of dying patients and their families. The model she developed is currently being adapted for use in Germany and Switzerland. With Children's Hospital of Boston and six other leading academic children's hospitals, she is spearheading a national initiative in pediatric palliative care.

Dr. Solomon has served as principal investigator on numerous grants from federal agencies, including the Agency for Health Research and Quality, the National Cancer Institute, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Health Resources and Services Administration on topics ranging from end-of-life care ethics to pain management, organ donation and sexually transmitted disease prevention. She is a senior editor on three peer-reviewed journals and frequently consults to government agencies, foundations, universities and national organizations. Her policy work has included, among other initiatives, advising the Institute of Medicine on the best ways to evaluate their new guidelines for nonheart-beating organ donation; she also chaired a national task force, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, on end-of-life care in managed care, which issued recommendations ultimately disseminated to 3,000 recipients, including national health care policy leaders and medical directors of all U.S. managed care organizations.

In the mid-1990s, Dr. Solomon was honored by the Association of Academic Health Centers for a "distinguished career in educational research." She received her BA degree from Smith College and her doctorate from Harvard University.

Anna L. Romer, EdD (Managing Editor)
Dr. Anna L. Romer is a senior research associate at the Center for Applied Ethics and Professional Practice at Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC). A developmental psychologist and educator with a strong research background in medical education and physician development, Dr. Romer served on the executive steering committee for the National Task Force on End-of-Life Care in Managed Care, a project conducted by EDC with funding from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In this capacity she was a senior author of the group's report: Meeting the Challenge: Twelve Recommendations for Improving End-of-Life Care in Managed Care. Dr. Romer also served as a co-investigator on a study of family perspectives on end-of-life care at a Harvard-affiliated teaching hospital. She was a member of the faculty at the 1999 seventh annual summer seminar, "Talking Ourselves to Death: Narratives and Caregiving at the End of Life," sponsored by the Center for Literature, Medicine, and the Health Care Professions at Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio. Recently, she was asked to become a member of the Scientific Board of Medycyna Paliatywna, the Polish palliative medicine journal. Bilingual in French and English as well as conversant in Polish, she has extensive experience living abroad. Dr. Romer received her BA degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, her MAT from the School for International Training at the Experiment in International Living (now World Learning) in Brattleboro, Vermont, a CAS in counseling and consulting psychology, and her EdD in human development and psychology from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Karen S. Heller, PhD (Associate Editor)
Dr. Karen S. Heller is a senior research associate in the Center for Applied Ethics and Professional Practice at Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC), where she is a co-investigator on a national project, Enhancing Family-Centered Care of Children Living with Life-Threatening Conditions, and serves as associate editor of Innovations in End-of-Life Care. At EDC, Dr. Heller formerly directed the national continuing medical education and quality improvement programs Decisions Near the End of Life and Decisions Near the End of Life: Focus on Cancer Care. A medical anthropologist with extensive research experience in urban community and clinical settings, Dr. Heller has been a researcher in studies concerning end-of-life decision-making among cancer and AIDS patients from diverse ethnic backgrounds being treated at a large, urban hospital; the management of chronic illness in frail, elderly people living in the community; social interaction among patients and staff in a nursing home; and factors influencing whether HIV-infected adults seek early treatment intervention. She also has worked as a writer and editor and was formerly director of the Communications Office in the Division of Cancer Control, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Heller received her BA from Sarah Lawrence College, her MA from the University of Chicago, and her PhD from the University of California at San Francisco and Berkeley, and was a Post-Doctoral Research Scholar at the Stanford University Center for Biomedical Ethics.

David E. Weissman, MD (Associate Editor)
Dr. Weissman is a professor of internal medicine and director of the Medical College of Wisconsin Palliative Care Program. As director of the National Internal Medicine End-of-Life Residency Education Project, he is currently working to introduce end-of-life curriculum into 210 US internal medicine residency programs. Dr. Weissman co-directs EPERC, End-of-Life Physician Education Resource Center, a web-based resource for peer-reviewed physician education information, and he is editor-in-chief of Journal of Palliative Medicine.

Holly D. Sivec (Staff Editor)
Holly Sivec served as a Research Assistant II with the Center for Applied Ethics and Professional Practice from 2001-2003. Prior to joining the Innovations staff, Holly worked in both the publishing and the consulting industry as a business and a technical editor. She also brought an international awareness to her work, stemming from her experience at the Harvard Business School coordinating executive education programs for executives from across the globe. Holly holds a BA in English and Writing from Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, PA as well as a Graduate Certificate in Publishing from Emerson College in Boston.