Leadership

Christine S. Ritchie, MD, MSPH

Founding Director

Christine Ritchie, MD, MSPH is Professor of Medicine and the Kenneth L. Minaker Chair of Geriatric Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in Boston, Massachusetts. She is a board-certified geriatrician and palliative care physician and conducts research focused on optimizing quality of life for those with chronic serious illness and multimorbidity. She has provided geriatric and palliative care to functionally impaired, seriously ill patients with multiple co-occurring conditions and those with dementia for the past two and a half decades. Her research focuses on patients with complex serious illness and multimorbidity and involves the assessment of patient and caregiver outcomes related to symptoms physical, cognitive and social function among older adults in multiple settings. As a clinician investigator, she has experience in informatics, mixed methods research, clinical trials and implementation science. Dr. Ritchie serves as MPI of the National Institute for Nursing Research-funded Palliative Care Research Cooperative (PCRC) and directs the PCRC Investigator Development Center. She is co-founder and co-director of the Home-based Primary Care Learning Network with co-investigator Dr. Bruce Leff. She serves as Director of Research for the Division of Palliative Care and Geriatric Medicine at MGH and directs the MGH Mongan Institute Center for Aging and Serious Illness Research.

Vicki Jackson, MD, MPH

Chief of the Division of Palliative Care

Harvard Catalyst

Dr. Jackson is the Blum Family Endowed Chair in Palliative Care and the Chief of the Division of Palliative Care and Geriatric Medicine at MGH and Professor in the Department of Medicine, Harvard Medical School (HMS). She also serves as the Co-Director of the HMS Center for Palliative Care. She was the founding Director for the Harvard Palliative Medicine Fellowship. She completed residency and chief residency in Internal Medicine at The Cambridge Hospital, HMS. She pursued training in research methods through the Harvard General Medicine Fellowship and completed a Master’s in Public Health at The Harvard School of Public Health. She completed training in palliative care at The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Jackson is the Palliative Care lead investigator and mentor on numerous studies funded through NIH, NCI, and PCORI investigating the effect of early, integrated palliative care for patients with advanced cancer. In 2019, she was the recipient of the prestigious Harvard Medical School A. Clifford Barger mentoring award. She is the co-author of the book Living with Cancer: A step by step guide to coping medically and emotionally with a serious diagnosis, published by Johns Hopkins University Press and What’s in the syringe? Principles of early Integrated Palliative Care published by Oxford University Press 2022. Nationally she serves as Secretary of the Board for the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Vicki is married to a lovely endocrinologist named Phil who has a special love for the adrenal gland. She has two teenagers Hannah and Sam and a golden retriever named Millie and a very large (some might say overweight) cat named Toby. She is originally from a small town in Northern Wisconsin.