Kathleen M. Foley, M.D. (Selection Committee Chair)

Kathleen M. Foley, MD, is an Emeritus Member at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and was Professor of Neurology, Neuroscience, and Clinical Pharmacology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University before her retirement in 2016. She held the Chair of the Society of Memorial Sloan Kettering Center in Pain Research and Palliative Care and served as the Chief of the Pain Service at MSKCC. She is the past director of MSKCC’s WHO Collaborating Center in Cancer Pain Research and Education and chaired three WHO expert committees resulting in the publication of three WHO monographs on Cancer Pain and Palliative Care in 1986, 1990, and 1996.  She also directed the Open Society Foundation’s Project on Death in America, a nine-year, 45-million-dollar effort to transform the culture of dying in the US, and served as the medical director of OSF’s International Palliative Care Initiative, which funded international efforts to advance palliative care in low and middle-income countries. She has published over 350 papers related to her national and international clinical and research efforts in the clinical pharmacology of opioid drugs and a public health and human rights approach to access to pain relief and palliative care.

Dr. Foley is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and was appointed to a five-year term on the Pontifical Academy of Life by Pope Francis as the Vatican focused on advancing palliative care internationally.

Dr. Foley has received numerous awards and honors for her work, including the Medal of Honor from the American Cancer Society, the David Karnofsky Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the Frank Netter Award from the American Academy of Neurology, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the European Association of Palliative Care.