2021 Webinar: Gaps in Advance Care Planning at Transplant Centers: Call for Action

Aran A. Patel, MD, PhD is a transplant hepatologist and health services researcher at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is also a staff physician at the West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Center and core investigator at the VA Center for the Study of Healthcare Innovation, Implementation and Policy (CSHIIP) in Los Angeles. He performed his residency in Internal Medicine at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, followed by fellowship in gastroenterology at UCLA and fellowship in Transplant Hepatology at Mount Sinai. He completed a PhD in Health Policy and Management at the Fielding School of Public Health at UCLA in 2020. 

Dr. Patel’s career goal is to ensure that patients with advanced liver disease receive high-value care that optimizes their quality of life. His research goal is to understand ways that principles of palliative care can be integrated in management of these patients and their caregivers.

Manisha Verma, MD, MPH, currently serves as the Director of Research at the Department of Digestive Diseases and Transplantation at Einstein Healthcare Network, Philadelphia, and as the Assistant Professor of Medicine, Research at Sidney Kimmel Medical College. Her program of research focuses on patient centered outcomes research (PCOR) within Hepatology and beyond.  She and her team received a 15 million research award from the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute to conduct a multi-site cluster randomized study to compare two models of palliative care delivery for ESLD. She has contributed to advances in knowledge of clinical applications of Health Services Research, specifically in the areas of clinical integration of patient reported outcomes assessments,  integrated care models (palliative care and behavioral health), and population-based health approaches. 

In her role, she is responsible for promoting and facilitating leading edge research, including collaborative and interdisciplinary research, in areas related to the mission of the Department (to advance patient care, education and new treatments for liver diseases). She serves as the Steering Committee member for the American Association for Study of Liver Diseases (AASLD) Public Health / Healthcare Delivery Group and as the Vice Chair for the Education Subcommittee. Dr. Verma has won both the Albert Einstein Society Innovative Awards and Albert Einstein Society Research Awards as a Principal Investigator since 2015 onwards.  The studies supported from these awards have led to development of a PCOR Pillar within the Department. 

Brett E. Fortune, MD, MSc, is a transplant hepatologist who works at New York Presbyterian/Weill Cornell for the Center for Liver Disease and Transplantation. Dr. Fortune has a clinical focus to provide excellent care for patients with advanced liver disease and those who need or have received liver transplantation.

Dr. Fortune’s research interests include clinical outcomes related to complications of cirrhosis and portal hypertension as well as quality improvement in the care of patients with cirrhosis or those who have received a liver transplant.