Dulce M. Cruz-Oliver, MD

Dulce M. Cruz-Oliver, received her MD and Internal Medicine residency from the University of Puerto Rico Medical Sciences Campus. She then sub-specialized in Geriatric Medicine after concluding two-year fellowship at the Saint Louis University. For 7 years she worked as Assistant Professor and then got promoted to Associate Professor at Saint Louis University (SLU) Division of Geriatric Medicine. She received support from the Geriatric Academic Career Award through HRSA and the Cambia Health Sojourns Scholar Leadership Program to develop herself as a Clinician-educator and researcher with focus on palliative and geriatric care education; and end-of-life care in Latino elders. One of her accomplishments at SLU was to start and leave in good standing the hospice and palliative medicine fellowship training program. Seven years ago, she was hired as Assistant Professor of Palliative Care at Johns Hopkins University. She has obtained NCI Diversity Supplement, a Pilot Grant by the Palliative Care Research Collaboration group through NINR and a NIA Beeson Supplement to develop, test and continue her research work with telenovelas for hospice family caregivers. Her goal is to empower Latino family caregivers and their healthcare professionals in caring for the seriously ill by promoting innovative educative initiatives and policy-relevant research.