Our Expert Team

Director of Palliative Care Research, Department of Medicine at UCLA & VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System
Professor of Medicine, Department of Medicine, Division of General Internal Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Palliative Care Physician, VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System

Dr. Anne M. Walling is director of palliative care research for the UCLA Department of Medicine at the and the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System.  She is a professor of medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research at UCLA; a Principal Investigator at the Veterans Affairs Center for the Study of Healthcare Innovation, Implementation, & Policy (CSHIIP); and a consulting researcher at RAND. She is the Assistant Medical Director of UCLA’s Advance Care Planning initiative and a palliative care physician and PhD-trained health services researcher. Her research is focused on palliative care quality measurement and stakeholder-partnered implementation research with the goal of improving care for patients with serious illness. Her work with quality measures has led in part to the National Quality Forum Endorsement for key palliative care quality indicators and national guidelines for integrating palliative care into end stage liver disease.  She is a fellow of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM), a Sojourns Scholar Leadership Program Grantee (Cambia Health Foundation), and Chair of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) Palliative Care Guidelines Committee. She is PI and co-PI for grants and contracts from federal and nonfederal sources including the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI), and the California Healthcare Foundation and has served as co-investigator on several other awards including from the National Institute of Health.

Assistant Professor of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Staff Hepatologist, VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System

Dr. Arpan Patel is an assistant professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a staff hepatologist at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System, where he is also Core Investigator at the Center for Study of Healthcare Innovation, Implementation and Policy (CSHIIP). Dr. Patel’s research aims to integrate principles of palliative care (including high-quality communication, shared decision making, symptom management, and caregiver support) in the management of patients with serious illnesses affecting the liver.  He has specific interests in developing models of palliative care for patients with decompensated cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma, and alcohol-associated liver disease

Professor of Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA
Director, Advance Care Planning Initiative, UCLA Health System

Dr. Neil S. Wenger is a professor in the UCLA Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research and a practicing general internist with an interest in patients with complex illness. He is the medical director for Advance Care Planning and he chairs the Ronald Reagan-UCLA Ethics Committee. At RAND, he is a senior scientist. Dr. Wenger's current research efforts focus on building health system-level advance care planning structures and on measuring and improving the quality of care for vulnerable older persons. Dr. Wenger's educational efforts focus on training physician fellows in health services and primary care research, training resident physicians in primary care general internal medicine, and teaching clinical ethics. He directs the HRSA-funded National Research Service Award Primary Care Research Fellowship in the Division of General Internal Medicine at UCLA. Wenger received his MD from the UCLA School of Medicine and his MPH from the UCLA School of Public Health.

Associate Professor of Medicine
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA

Dr. Yusuke Tsugawa is an associate professor of medicine and health policy and management at UCLA. He is primarily known for his health services research on physician and health system factors associated with the quality of care patients receive. He has extensive experience in conducting studies using Medicare claims data and other large databases. His research advanced the field by showing, for the first time, that the variation in healthcare spending between individual physicians is larger than the variation between hospitals, shedding light on physicians as the key driver of healthcare variations. His research has also demonstrated several important physician factors—such as age, gender, and medical education and training—associated with the quality of care delivered to older adults. Dr. Tsugawa has more than 140 publications in peer-reviewed medical journals, including publications in top journals such as JAMA, JAMA Intern Med, Ann Intern Med, BMJ, Lancet, and PNAS. He is an NIH-funded researcher in the field of the quality of end-of-life care provided to persons with AD/ADRD (R01AG068633; Tsugawa, PI) racial and ethnic disparities in surgical care (R01MD013913; Tsugawa, PI), and racial and ethnic disparities in AD/ADRD care (R01AG082991; Tsugawa, PI).

Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine
Department of Medicine at UCLA

Dr. Thanh Neville is a pulmonary and critical care physician whose research interest is in improving communication and end-of-life care in the intensive care unit. In 2017, she founded and the UCLA 3 Wishes Program (3WP), an initiative in which healthcare workers are empowered to elicit and implement small but meaningful wishes for dying hospitalized patients and their families. Her research has demonstrated that the 3WP is an affordable intervention that enriches interpersonal connections among patients, family members, and clinicians, eases family grief, and enhances clinician work satisfaction. Recently, she has been awarded an NIH R01 to implement and evaluate the 3WP in the Los Angeles safety-net hospitals.

Project Director, Palliative Care Research Center
Public Administration Analyst, Department of Medicine at UCLA

Katherine Santos is project director of the Palliative Care Research Center and a public administration analyst in the UCLA Department of Medicine Division of General Internal Medicine and Health Services Research. She assists Dr. Wenger and Dr. Walling in their efforts to improve advance care planning and quality of care for patients with serious illness at the health system level. Most recently, she oversaw the implementation and evaluation of advance care planning interventions at three University of California sites for the UC Health Care Planning Study. She has significant experience in survey development, community advisor engagement, and project management. She is also the administrative lead at UCLA for a new multisite, randomized controlled trial led by Dana Ferber/Harvard Cancer Center that aims to compare the efficacy of a supportive care digital app versus usual care in patients with advanced lung cancer.