August 25, 2023
Dr. Elyse Singer was awarded a two-year Senior Research Award from the National Science Foundation ($238,000) for a project titled "Bioethical Frameworks Informing Medical Decision-Making around Palliative Care." Population aging and the rise of chronic illness in Mexico means that more and more people suffer a slow decline at the end of life marked by physical and psychic pain. What the terminally ill as well as their biomedical and family caregivers want at the end of life remains poorly understood. This research is based in the palliative care wards of two major public hospitals in the Mexican capital and is designed to investigate how the terminally ill, their family members, and their palliative care clinicians define and strive to accomplish dignified death. The project provides training for a postdoctoral researcher, Alicia Ordoñez Vázquez, who will be based in Mexico City throughout the project period.
