Zara Cooper, MD, MSc, FACS, Kessler Director for the Center for Surgery and Public Health, was awarded a Pilot & Exploratory Project Support Grant from the National Palliative Care Research Center (NPCRC) for her project entitled “The Trauma Dyad: Tending to Caregivers of Injured Frail Elders.”
This award provides funding for investigators performing pilot/exploratory studies whose purpose is to test interventions, develop research methodologies or explore novel areas of research that are directly related to the NPCRC’s mission and areas of interest.
Cooper’s study will survey informal caregivers of older patients who have experienced traumatic injury to examine the social, emotional and physical effects of providing informal care. She and her colleagues will conduct surveys and interviews at two timepoints after patient discharge to collect data on modifiable factors that can reduce burden in this population.
The mission of the NPCRC is to strengthen the evidence-based foundation needed for health policy and clinical practice in palliative care medicine by growing and supporting the community of palliative care research scientists and stimulating expanded research and innovation.
Zara Cooper, MD, MSc, FACS
Kessler Director, Center for Surgery and Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital
Associate Professor of Surgery, Harvard Medical School
An acute care surgeon, trauma surgeon and surgical intensivist, Cooper focuses her broader research on identifying ways to improve palliative and geriatric care for older, seriously ill surgical patients. A national leader in surgical palliative care and geriatric trauma, she has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed manuscripts, chapters, and abstracts and lectures about surgical care in complex older patients.