David J. Casarett, M.D., M.A.
Assistant Professor of Medicine
Staff Physician, Philadelphia VAMC
Fellow of the Institute on Aging

University of Pennsylvania
Division of Geriatric Medicine
Ralston-Penn Center
3615 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104-2676

Telephone: (215) 898-2583
Facsimile: (215) 573-8684
E-mail: casarett@med.upenn.edu

Education

Postgraduate Training and Fellowship Appointments

Research/Clinical Interests

1. Decision-making by patients with serious illness
2. Patient-family shared decision-making
3. Decision aids
4. Informed consent and research ethics in seriously ill populations
   
   

Biographical Sketch

David Casarett MD MA completed his medical training at Case Western Reserve University in 1993, and his internship and residency in internal medicine at the University of Iowa in 1996. His additional training has included a Master’s degree in medical anthropology at CWRU, and fellowships in ethics at the University of Chicago and in Palliative Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He has worked as a hospice medical director and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Division of Geriatric Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also a staff physician at the Philadelphia VAMC, where he is the medical director of the palliative care service, and is on the faculty of the Center for Health Equity Research and Promotion. Dr. Casarett is board certified in Internal Medicine and Palliative Medicine, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine.

Dr. Casarett’s major research interest is understanding and improving the way that patients near the end of life and their families make medical decisions. His work in this area has included epidemiological studies of referral to hospice and utilization of alternatives to hospice, studies of decision-making about end of life care, and a randomized controlled trial of an intervention to promote earlier hospice referrals in nursing homes. Dr. Casarett is also the PI of federally funded studies to assess the quality of end-of-life care in the VA health care system, and to improve access to high-quality end of life care for patients with cancer.

Dr. Casarett’s research has been funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs, by a Paul Beeson Physician Faculty Scholars Award, and by other grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Hartford Foundation, and the Greenwall Foundation. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Outstanding Clinical Investigator Award from the American Geriatrics Society, the William A. Nelson Award in Ethics from the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from the White House.