Faculty
Robert M. Arnold, MD
Dr. Arnold has published on end-of-life care, hospice and palliative care, doctor-patient communication, and ethics education. His current research interests are focused on educational interventions to improve communication in life-limiting illnesses and better understanding how ethical precepts are operationalized in clinical practice. He is the Director of the Institute for Doctor-Patient Communication and the Medical Director of the UPMC Palliative and Supportive Institute.
Hailey W. Bulls, PhD, MA
Assistant Director, Challenges in Managing and Preventing Pain Clinical Research Center
Dr. Bulls has expertise in palliative care, pain management, substance use, and health services research in oncology. Her research is primarily focused on quality-of-life challenges faced by cancer patients, specifically cancer-related pain and neuropathy.
Karlyn Edwards, PhD
One area of Dr. Edwards' resaerch focuses on developing and studying brief digital interventions for chronic pain. She also has expertise in delivering acceptance-based interventions for chronic pain.
José Giovanni Luiggi-Hernández, PhD, MPH
Dr. Luiggi-Hernández has over a decade of research experiences contributing to projects covering psychotherapy process and outcomes for both physical and mental health conditions, clinical decision-making, digital health technologies, program evluations, pre-implementation research, health disparities, social determinants of health, substsance use, and more.
Jessica S. Merlin, MD, PhD, MBA
Director, Challenges in Managing and Preventing Pain Clinical Research Center
Dr. Merlin’s research focuses on chronic pain in people living with HIV (PLWH), and more generally, individuals with comorbid mental illness and addiction. Her studies range from pathogenesis to clinical epidemiology to behavioral interventions.
Gina Piscitello, MD, MS
Dr. Piscitello is interested in research at the intersection of clinical medical ethics and palliative medicine, including clinician-patient communication, code status, moral distress, ECMO, and scarce resource allocation.
Jane Schell, MD, MHS
Section Chief, Palliative Care and Medical Ethics
Dr. Schell’s research centers on physician communication skills training. She has developed and measured outcomes for a communication curriculum for nephrology fellows on palliative care topics.
Yael Schenker, MD, MAS
Director, Palliative Research Center (PaRC)
Dr. Schenker’s primary research focus is understanding and improving provision of primary palliative care in oncology. Using mixed methods, her work has uncovered barriers to receipt of specialty palliative and led to the development and evaluation of a nurse-led primary palliative care intervention called CONNECT. Dr. Schenker has also published widely on topics including surrogate decision making, informed consent, healthcare advertising, and language barriers.