Faculty Expert Profile

Katherine Ornstein, an epidemiologist by training, is director of the Center for Equity in Aging.

Her program of research focuses on older individuals with serious illness and their families and includes work on the downstream effects of health care on families and caregivers; the epidemiology of the homebound population; burden and cost in dementia caregiving over time; and home-based clinical care in dementia and other settings.

Her work applies a social epidemiologic framework to geriatric and palliative care research to determine how end-of-life care, including hospice care and the use of life-sustaining treatments, for patients with serious illness impacts the long-term health and health care utilization of family members.

She also works closely with clinicians to improve care for the highly underserved homebound population by designing and evaluating innovative multidisciplinary models of home-based primary and palliative care.