Rolfe Sean Morrison

Biography

Director, Lilian and Benjamin Hertzberg Palliative Care Institute            Director, National Palliative Care Research Center
Vice Chair for Research
Professor, Departments of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine, and Internal Medicine

Dr. R. Sean Morrison is Director of the Lilian and Benjamin Hertzberg Palliative Care Institute and the National Palliative Care Research Center, national organizations devoted to increasing the evidence base of palliative care in the United States. He is also the Vice-Chair of Research; Professor of Geriatrics and Medicine; and Hermann Merkin Professor of Palliative Medicine in the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. During 2009-2010, he served as President of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. 

Dr. Morrison is the recipient of numerous awards, including a PDIA American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine National Leadership Award, the American Geriatrics Society’s Outstanding Achievement for Clinical Investigation Award, the Open Society Institute Faculty Scholar’s Award of the Project on Death in America, a Paul Beeson Faculty Scholars Award, a Brookdale National Fellowship, and a Faculty Council Award from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.  He is currently Principal Investigator of an NIA funded five-year multisite study on improving the management of pain in older adults.

Dr. Morrison has received over $35 million dollars in research funding and published over 100 research articles.  His work has appeared in all major peer-reviewed medical journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, Annals of Internal Medicine, and the Journal of the American Medical Association. He edited the first textbook on geriatric palliative care and has contributed to more than 15 books on the subject of geriatrics and palliative care. As one of the leading figures in the field of palliative medicine, Dr. Morrison has appeared numerous times on television and in print, including ABC World News Tonight, The Factor with Bill O’Reilly, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, the Philadelphia Enquirer, the New York Daily News, Newsday, AARP, and Newsweek. He figured prominently in the Bill Moyers series On Our Own Terms, a four-part documentary aired on PBS and in Gail Sheehy’s new book, Passages in Caregiving.

Dr. Morrison received his BA from Brown University and his MD from the University of Chicago Pritzker School Of Medicine. He completed his residency training at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center followed by fellowship training at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. He has been on the faculty of the Department of Geriatrics and Palliative Medicine and Department of Medicine at Mount Sinai since 1995.