This Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Investigator Award in Health Policy Research will fund interdisciplinary research into how best to serve the needs of patients with severe brain injury and their families through better clinical services and the promotion of clinical research. The work is designed to improve clinician-family communication about brain injury, inform educational standards for professionals, and articulate a justification for research in patients who are unable to provide consent.

This protocol aims to create a dedicated unit at Rockefeller University Hospital that will provide an ideal setting in which to initiate new research in clinical science and translational neuroethics, focusing on the prognosis and treatment of seriously brain-injured patients. 

This project aims to understand what biases surrogate decision makers for patients with disorders of consciousness have and how these impact their choices for those patients. The primary goal of this study is to gain a better understanding of the experiences that surrogates of patients with DOC have and how these experiences shape their motivations to pursue therapeutic interventions or secure diagnostic clarity for the patient.