Congratulations to Professor and Palliative Care Fellowship Director Cathy Berkman, Ph.D., who received two awards from the Social Work Hospice and Palliative Care Network at its annual conference in April.
Award #1: Award for Excellence in Teaching (primarily for developing the Palliative Care Fellowship and the two courses she introduced into the curriculum: Palliative Social Work; Grief, Loss and Bereavement)
Award #2: Award for Excellence in Research – awarded for Berkman’s distinguished 25-year research expertise.
Few people have received two Excellence Awards, and this is the only time that anyone has received two awards simultaneously.
About Dr. Berkman
Cathy Berkman is a Professor at Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service. She received a BS from the University of Vermont, with a major in social welfare. She earned an MSW from Boston University, with a focus on community organization and research. Her PhD is from Yale University, Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, where she was an NIMH Pre-Doctoral Fellow in psychosocial and psychiatric epidemiology and aging). She was an NIMH Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Columbia University School of Public Health, Psychiatric Epidemiology Training Program and a Research Associate at the Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology.
Berkman is the Director of the Palliative Care Fellowship, which is an immersive program for Specialist Year MSW students who want a career working with seriously ill persons and their families.
Berkman is Chair of the Research Domain and teaches research methods in the MSW program and teaches courses on statistics and integrative quantitative research in the PhD program.
Berkman’s research focuses on palliative and end-of-life care, including: cross-cultural issues in preferences for treatment, communication with health care providers and family, and knowledge and attitudes about advance care planning; and discriminatory palliative and end-of-life care received by LGBTQ+ patients. She is also conducting research on the underrepresentation of persons of color in palliative and hospice care.
