About the Author

Joanne Lynn, MD, MA (Philosophy and Social Policy), MS (Quantitative Clinical Sciences), has served thousands of persons in their last years of life in home care, office practice, hospice care, and nursing homes. Dr. Lynn’s vision is to help the United States achieve social arrangements that ensure that, when we must live with serious chronic illnesses associated with advancing age, we can count on living meaningfully and comfortably, at a sustainable cost to our families and society. She was one of the first hospice physicians in the United States. Dr. Lynn was Director of Altarum Institute’s Center for Elder Care and Advanced Illness. She has been a tenured professor at Dartmouth and George Washington University, a quality measurement expert on the staff at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Bureau Chief for Cancer and Chronic Disease in the public health office for Washington (DC), a senior researcher at RAND, and on the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s quality improvement faculty. She is a member of the National Academy of Medicine, a Master of the American College of Physicians, a Fellow of the Hastings Institute and the American Geriatrics Society, and an author of more than 290 peer-reviewed publications, over 80 books and chapters, and a dozen amicus briefs and publications for public commissions.