Rebecca L. Sudore, MD
Photo: Rebecca Sudore

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Elected 2016

Dr. Rebecca Sudore is a Geriatrician, Hospice and Palliative Care physician, VA Staff Physician, and an Associate Professor at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). Dr. Sudore conducts research on improving advance care planning and medical decision making for diverse, vulnerable older adults with limited health literacy. She has designed and tested an informed consent process for patients with limited literacy and an advance directive that is both literacy and culturally appropriate (http://www.iha4health.org/our-services/advance-directive/). Both interventions have been shown to benefit patients - particularly those with literacy and/or language barriers. Her current research program is focused on creating and testing culturally- and literacy-appropriate tools to help patients engage in advance care planning. She developed a new paradigm of advance care planning that focuses on preparing diverse, older adults to communicate their evolving wishes over time and to make real-time, complex medical decisions over the course of chronic and advanced illness. She recently launched the PREPARE website (www.prepareforyourcare.org) which walks patients and their families through an easy, step-by step process to prepare for communication and medical decision making. The goal of this work is to better enable patients to engage in the advance care planning process and to make informed medical decisions over the life course and at the end-of-life.