2024

Early-Career Physician Awards Andre M. Cipta, MD, FAAHPM, Assistant Professor of Clinical Science, Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine. Dr. Cipta is the program director of the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship and site director of the innovative mid-career fellowship track at the Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center. He also serves as associate medical director of the Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Hospice Agency and palliative medicine clerkship director at the Tyson School of Medicine. Board certified in Hospice and Palliative Medicine, Dr. Cipta is a recipient of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine Leadership Scholar

Dr. Richard Payne Leadership Award Hunter Groninger, MD, FAAHPM, Director of the Section of Palliative Care, MedStar Washington Hospital Center; Scientific Director for Palliative Care, MedStar Health Research Institute; and Professor of Medicine, Georgetown University. For the last 20 years, his clinical practice has focused on providing hospice and palliative care to patients and their families in Washington, DC, across all care settings. Active in clinical education, Dr. Groninger founded the MedStar Health/Washington Hospital Center Interprofessional Palliative Medicine Fellowship and teaches at MedStar Health and Georgetown University School of Medicine. He is also an investigator at the MedStar Health Research Institute.

Senior Career Physician Winner Julie Hauer, MD, Division of General Pediatrics, Boston Children’s Hospital, Assistant Professor, Harvard Medical School. Dr Hauer has been committed for 28 years to the rare population of children with disorders of the central nervous system who have multiple co-morbidities, resulting in complex medical care and decision-making. Her expertise includes symptom treatment for chronic pain, feeding intolerance, and dyspnea, which factors in mechanisms of symptom generation specific to this population. Dr. Hauer developed medical content for NeuroJourney at Courageous Parents Network, a team effort that included editing by parent experts. She is currently focused on a

Mid-Career Physician Award Lynn Flint, MD, Clinical Professor in the Division of Geriatrics, University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Flint is the medical director of outpatient palliative care at the San Francisco VA Medical Center and the founding director of the UCSF integrated geriatrics and palliative care fellowship, the first such fellowship on the West Coast. The program aims to produce leaders in the care of older adults and those with serious illnesses. In honor of her contributions to education, in 2021 she was inducted into The Haile T. Debas Academy of Medical Educators, which supports people who advance the

Tyler Tate, MD, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). Dr. Tate is a pediatric palliative physician, ethicist, writer, and researcher at OHSU. He serves as an associate director of the OHSU Center for Ethics in Health Care and founding director of the Oregon Bioethics and Humanities Colloquium speaker series. Dr. Tate has written extensively about suffering and decision-making in the palliative context, with a special focus on promoting just and compassionate health care for people with physical and intellectual disabilities. His academic work has been published in numerous journals, including the Hastings Center Report, Pediatrics, and

Richard Leiter, MD, MA, Assistant Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School. Dr. Leiter is a palliative care physician, writer, and researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He serves as the director of the Inpatient Palliative Care Consult Service and founding director of the Psychosocial Oncology and Palliative Care Writing Core, and he sits on the Brigham and Women’s ethics committee. Dr. Leiter writes about the intersection of palliative care and ethics and the emotional experience of working in the field. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, The New England Journal of Medicine, STATNews,