About

Dr. Hanson is a tenured Professor in the Division of Geriatric Medicine, Department of Medicine at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. She was a founding co-Director of the UNC Palliative Care Program, an interdisciplinary program of palliative care services and related research and teaching. As a board-certified physician in Internal Medicine, Geriatric Medicine, and Hospice and Palliative Medicine, she provides clinical services for frail and medically complex older patients, and for adult patients of all ages with serious and potentially life-limiting illness.

Dr. Hanson leads a research program to understand and improve the quality of palliative care for nursing home residents and other vulnerable populations. As the lead clinical investigator on the PEACE Project she helped to develop and test clinical quality measures endorsed by the National Quality Forum and applied nationwide in hospice care. She has been the principal investigator or co-investigator for numerous studies to improve nursing home dementia care, including two NIH-NIA funded randomized clinical trials of decision aids for palliative care in advanced dementia. Dr. Hanson also serves on the Steering Committee and as a site-Principal Investigator for the Measurement Core of the Palliative Care Research Cooperative group, a nationwide palliative care clinical trials network.