The NIH Medicine: Mind the Gap Seminar Series Presents:

“Cancer Care: The Patient’s Role, Palliative Care, and Implications for Health Policy"

What would you do if you were diagnosed with a life-limiting disease? Ms. Berman will share her experiences from the front row of terminal illness and talk about the role of the patient in establishing the goals of care, the importance of palliation, and recommendations for healthcare policy. This is an opportunity to learn how an activated patient, in partnership with the healthcare team, can play a vital role in achieving the triple aim of better health, better care, and lower costs.

Ms. Berman, R.N., is a senior program officer with The John A. Hartford Foundation. She heads the Foundation’s Integrating and Improving Services grants, focusing on the development and dissemination of innovative, cost- effective models of care that improve health outcomes for older adults. Ms. Berman is the program officer responsible for a number of efforts to improve transitions of care as well as the Foundation’s work to improve home healthcare delivery and efforts to redesign primary care to better meet the needs of those with multiple chronic diseases. She also directs a number of collaborations with Federal partners. Ms. Berman is responsible for the development of the National League for Nursing’s geriatric-focused faculty development effort, Advancing Care Excellence for Seniors. This program provides educational strategies, curricular resources, and case studies used in simulation that enhance the geriatric competence of faculty and students. Ms. Berman developed resources and programs to improve the geriatric expertise of nursing educators and clinicians, and conducted a national survey on gerontological nursing content in baccalaureate programs. Her findings were cited in the Institute of Medicine’s report, Retooling for an Aging America: Building the Health Care Workforce. Ms. Berman has served as a Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations coordinator and an accreditation consultant in performance improvement for a variety of healthcare institutions. She also has served on the New York State Department of Health’s Emergency Preparedness Task Force and on the professional advisory boards of healthcare institutions in New York City. Ms. Berman is an appointed member of the Aging Task Force for Healthy People 2020 and Health Resources and Services Administration’s Patient Safety Clinical Pharmacy Services Leadership Coordinating Council. She is a member of Academy Health; the Gerontological Society of America; and the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau.

This seminar is sponsored by the Office of Disease Prevention, Office of Research on Women’s Health, and the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine.

The Medicine: Mind the Gap seminar series explores a wide range of issues at the intersection of research, evidence, and clinical practice, especially areas in which conventional wisdom may be misleading. The seminar series aims to engage the National Institutes of Health community in thought-provoking discussions to challenge what we think we know and to think critically about our role in today’s research environment. Seminars to date have explored gaps between ethical theory and medical practice, the role of medical evidence in reducing practice variation and controlling costs, and special challenges of “rules of evidence” in translational research.

For more information go to http://prevention.nih.gov/mindthegap/berman.aspx