Billy Rosa

Billy Rosa

Discipline: Nurse Practitioner
Funding awarded to: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center

A Stakeholder-Informed Training Program to Improve Palliative Care Communication Quality for LGBTQ+ Patients' Families of Choice in the Oncology Setting

My aim is to design, implement, and evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of a stakeholder-informed communication skills training program for multidisciplinary oncology healthcare providers to improve palliative care communication quality with LGBTQ+ patients’ families of choice that can be adapted and disseminated nationally. The program will be implemented at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Communication Skills Training Program and Research Laboratory. The long-term objective is to guide the design of a subsequent multi-site trial testing the effectiveness of the proposed program for both healthcare providers and LGBTQ+ oncology patient/family of choice palliative care outcomes.

“Through the Sojourns Scholars Program, I seek to build alliances—not just relationships—with similarly minded leaders who believe palliative care can pave the path toward human-centered, evidence-based, and equitable serious illness and end of life care.”