Grand Rounds - October 8, 2026

Designing effective palliative care interventions is only the beginning; researchers must also unpack how they work, address the interconnected needs of persons with serious illness and caregivers, and bridge the gap between clinical trials and real-world delivery.

ASCENT was joined by four leading experts in serious illness intervention research for a high-impact panel discussion on next-generation approaches to palliative care research. Key topics included:

• NIH Stage Model Rigor: Navigating Stages 0–5 to build mechanistically sound, theoretically grounded, patient/family-centered behavioral interventions that scale.
• Dual-Tier Innovation: Developing rigorous new palliative-informed interventions that utilize innovative delivery approaches and highly specific interventions delivered by palliative specialists.
• Whole-Person Health: Elevating rigor in spiritual and psychosocial intervention science.
• Dyads, Triads & Care Convoys: Interventions that mechanistically integrates care across complex patient-caregiver networks, and analyzes both individual and within group outcomes.
• Lifespan Adaptation: Designing and tailoring interventions to serve across age groups from neonates to the older adults.

Together, these insights offer a roadmap to better build, evaluate, and scale palliative care interventions that truly serve persons with serious illness, caregivers, and their broader care networks while removing the “black box” around how they work.