Program Faculty

Affiliated Faculty

Advisors

Connie Cole, PhD, DNP, APRN (2022-2024):  Dr. Cole’s research interest and clinical expertise include palliative care, pain, and aging. Her research focuses on improving access to palliative care for nursing home residents through improved screening for identification of palliative care needs. Dr. Cole has extensive clinical experience with nursing home residents as a director of nursing, Minimum Data Set (MDS) coordinator, and nurse practitioner. In these roles, she has seen the challenges associated with end-of-life care, pain and symptom management, and the complex care requirements of nursing home residents. Dr. Cole’s goal as a palliative care researcher is to improve the quality of life for nursing home residents through improved access to palliative care, making sure that nursing home residents receive care that is meaningful and person centered, with an emphasis on improving the quality of life in the final months and years of life.

Shaowei Wan, PhD, MS, MA, BPharm (2022-2024); Dr. Shaowei Wan’s research interests focus on end-of-life care disparities and inter-professional team sciences. Her research examines rural disparities in access to end-of-life care among older adults with advanced cancer and the context of care coordination between interprofessional teams for older adults with advanced cancer living in rural to gain access to palliative and hospice care in the cancer care trajectory. Her goal is to develop and evaluate a feasible intervention to address barriers at the health system level to access timely and appropriate treatment mix of palliative and hospice care among rural older adults with advanced cancer. Her long-term career goal is to reduce end-of-life disparities among underserved communities and populations leveraging comprehensive research methodology and team sciences.

C. Robert Bennett PhD, CPNP-AC (2021-2023); Dr. Bennett’s research focuses on the lived experiences of aging young adults who have survived cancer during childhood and are experiencing a secondary cancer as an adult. His research applies descriptive methods, grounded in the Relational Caring Inquiry and Husserlian Phenomenology. Dr. Bennett’s goal as a Palliative Care researcher is to investigate the concept of hope, the impact of hope, and the transitions of hope for aging young adults as a means for decreasing psychological, spiritual, and existential suffering in this population. His long-term goals are to develop future interventions that sustain hope for aging young adults across their lifespan. 

Korijna Valenti PhD, MS, MPW (2021-2023); Dr. Valenti’s research focuses on geriatric palliative care for underserved populations by developing interventions that can be used to improve the goals, emotional trajectory, and relationship quality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) older adult patients, and to improve patient-dyad outcomes. To achieve this goal, Dr. Valenti’s current research examines communication approaches and their impact on a) palliative care practitioners’ (PCPs) utilization of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) data; b) PCPs experiences with LGBT older adult patients (individually and as a dyad); and c) LGBT older adult patient and dyad knowledge of palliative care and their experiences around palliative care communication.

Zachary A. Macchi, MD (2020-2022); Dr. Macchi is a behavioral neurologist from the University of Colorado Anschutz where he also completed his residency in neurology and subspeciality training. His research uses qualitative and quantitative approaches to understand factors which affect caregivers of patients living with Parkinson’s disease, looking at determinants of caregiver burden while also examining patient behaviors that affect patient and caregiver outcomes, like aggression and agitation.

Katherine Doyon, PhD, RN (2019-2021); Dr. Doyon’s mission is to design innovative methods to assess and improve communication between clinicians and patients with serious illness. To achieve this goal, her current work is focused on a communication coaching intervention designed to improve nurse perceived self-efficacy in spiritual communication and African American patients with heart failure.

Shauna Siler, PhD ​(2018-2020); The focus of Dr. Siler’s research is on integrating spiritual care into palliative care and implementation of community-based palliative care interventions for minority populations.​

Evan Plys, PhD​ (2018-2020); The focus of Dr. Plys’ research is on quality of life of older adults with physical and/or cognitive limitations due to serious illness in residential care settings.​

Kathleen Bickel, MD, MPhil, MS​, (2017-2019); Dr. Bickel is examining the hypothesis that patients with a diagnosis of PTSD are more likely to have increased acute health care utilization at the end-of-life, using a retrospective cohort study of chronically ill Veterans receiving VA health care benefits dying between 2010-2015. Using multivariate regression, Dr. Bickel will determine if PTSD is associated with increased end-of-life health care utilization. Dr. Bickel also hypothesizes that the effect of PTSD on end-of-life will vary depending on the primary chronic illness, it will be important to accurately characterize a veteran’s primary chronic illness at time of death. These findings will provide baseline information about the scope of this problem so that appropriate interventions can be developed.

​Sean M. Reed, PhD, APN, ACNS-BC, ACHPN,​ (2017-2019); The focus of Dr. Reed’s research is on the design and testing of economic and predictive models aimed to improve the delivery of care for the seriously ill.​

​Jennifer Dickman Portz, PhD, MSW, (2016-2018); Dr. Portz’s mission is to advance social work research in geriatric palliative care by developing digital health interventions that can be used by older adults with advanced illnesses, their caregivers, and family to effectively improve patient-family centered outcomes. To achieve this goal, her current research is focused in three related areas: 1) identification of outcomes and needs important to patients with chronic disease and adva​nced illness 2) creation, study, and dissemination of digital health for older adult users, and 3) chronic disease self-management.​​

Nicole Amoyal Pensak, PhD (2015- 2016); Dr. Amoyal Pensak’s research focuses on improving distress management in patients and caregivers of adults with serious illnesses.​

Tim Sannes, PhD​ (2015- 2017); ​Dr. Sannes’ research aims to develop new and improved support mechanisms for patients and their family members facing serious illness. Specifically, he seeks to determine if stress marker data can be translated into meaningful strategies for patients and their caregivers and investigate if emerging biomarker data influences decision-making and behavior.​

Goals and Objectives Curriculum

All T32-funded trainees will be postdoctoral physician scientists or PhD scientists who have indicated substantial interests in learning translational or clinical research that is relevant to aging and palliative care.  Upon completion of the program, the trainees will be expected to have mastered basic technical aspects of research and to have progressed to an independent stage of developing their own ideas and projects.

Curriculum: Personalized Formal Research Training

Coursework: As a T32 trainee, you will be required to take the following courses or equivalent (or demonstrate equivalent prior training):

As required by the NIH, you must complete 8 hours of training in the responsible conduct of research.  This requirement may be fulfilled by taking the CLSC courses 7150 (Ethics) and 7151 (Responsible Conduct of Human Research), the PHCL course 7605 (Ethics in Research) or the BIOS course 7605 (Ethics: Computational Bioscience Research) or via the seminar series offered by University of Colorado Clinical research Support Center https://research.cuanschutz.edu/regulatory-compliance/home/research-integrity/responsible-conduct-of-research-training .  This requirement must be completed in Year 1 of the award.​

Additional courses will be selected from the CLSC catalogue by the trainee and his or her mentor(s) to best fit the future research goals of the trainee.  The course work plan will be part of the required Career Development Plan (CDP).  T32 trainees will have the option of completing the requirements for award of a Master's degree in Clinical Investigation.

Minimum Expectations for ALL T32 Trainees

• Attend other relevant conferences (e.g. University of Colorado Palliative Care Conference (UC-PCC), Geriatrics Grand Rounds).
• Present research to a topic-relevant research seminar (as agreed to with mentors) at least once per year.
• Develop and conduct at least 1 research project with their mentor(s), including agreed upon timelines and productivity benchmarks as part of a written Individual Career Development Plan.
• Participate in weekly meetings with primary mentor (or senior/junior mentorship dyad) and with entire Mentorship Committee (at least twice yearly).
• Present at Palliative Care Journal Club as assigned and at the UC-PCC at least twice each year.
• Completion of required courses and other didactic training as determined by the needs assessment delineated in the Individualized Career Development Plan.
• Submission of required review materials to document progress (twice yearly).
• Presentation of abstracts at relevant national professional meetings (submit 2 abstracts per award year).
• Publication of peer-reviewed manuscripts (submit 3 manuscripts per award year).
• Application for pilot grant funding (internal or external) during year 1.
• Submission of an individual research career development award application prior to completion of the T32 training period.
• Maintain contact with the T32 following training for collection of data on presentations, publications, grants, degrees and academic positions.​

Application Form (PDF)

Letter of Interest

NIH format Biosketch with personal statement (CV or resume accepted)

3 Letters of recommendation

3-page Goals Statement

3-page Project Description

Please refer to the T32 Flyer for more information.

Send or email your materials to:

Ariana Villalobos 
General Internal Medicine
Department of Medicine

Academic Office 1, room 8411
12631 E 17th Ave, Mail Stop B180
Aurora, CO  80045
Phone: (303) 724-2261
Fax: (303) 724-2270
ariana.villalobos@cuanschutz.edu