Dr. May Hua selected to the Irving Scholars Program

Dr. May Hua, Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology (In Epidemiology) at Columbia University Medical Center and national leader and research authority on palliative and end-of-life care, is a 2021-2024 Irving Scholar. The Irving Institute’s prestigious award supports outstanding scientists and physician-scientists performing clinical and translational research.

Dr. Hua’s project, “Palliative Care Effectiveness for Patients with Serious Illness,” will help build the evidence base for specialist palliative care for patients with non-cancer serious illness. Dr. Hua’s research questions have the potential to substantially change care, as they will examine whether previously demonstrated benefits of palliative care in patients with advanced cancer may be translated to other patients with serious illness in real-world settings.

“Palliative care is about trying to focus more holistically on patients’ needs, particularly at end of life or when the patient is dealing with serious illness,” says Dr. Hua. “We know [illness] comes along with a host of other things, like pain, anxiety, and depression which obviously affects their lives."

The multidisciplinary specialist palliative care team includes social workers or chaplains trained to help patients and their families with the spiritual, psychological, and social stress of illness and making difficult decisions in the face of uncertainty. Specialist palliative care focuses on providing goal-concordant care, addressing “not just the extension of life, but how the illness is affecting the patient’s life,” and balancing the care provided with the values of the patient and the patient’s family.

“It takes a lot of time and effort to understand whether [patient] goals are achievable,” says Dr. Hua, and currently, with only about 8,000 board-certified palliative care specialists in the United States, there are “not nearly enough providers for the number of people who are dealing with serious illness.” The pandemic highlighted even more the need for–– and value of––this care, as the families of isolated, critically ill patients struggled to make life-or-death decisions. “I told one of my friends [during the surge] that we could have every palliative care specialist in the country working now, and it still wouldn’t be enough.”

More about Dr. May Hua, including her 2021 National Cancer Institute grant award for her project, “Determinants of Palliative Care Effectiveness for Patients with Metastatic Cancer.”