The Guest Editors of this issue of Seminars in Neurology are Drs. Maisha Robinson and Claire Creutzfeldt.

Dr. Robinson is Assistant Professor of Neurology at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL. She received her AB from Princeton University, attended Medical School at Tufts University in Boston, and then completed her Neurology Residency at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. She is fellowship-trained in Hospice and Palliative Medicine from Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, as well as Neurohospitalist fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL. Finally, she also attended University of California, Los Angeles as part of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Clinical Scholars Program. In this program, she built on her previous research experience by engaging in course work that culminated in a Master of Science in Health Policy and Management with an Implementation Science focus, as well as engaged in research projects that aligned with her clinical and research interests in Palliative Medicine, Neurology, and end-of-life care. She currently serves as Chair of the Division of Palliative Medicine at Mayo Clinic Florida, and leads the Neurosupportive Care Clinic that specifically provides palliative care to patients with serious or advanced neurological conditions, including dementia, as well as their caregivers. Her research interests focus on community-partnered participatory research in the African American community specifically related to dementia education and advance care planning. Given her clinical and research background, in addition to her experience in health services research and role as the Chair of the Ethics Subcommittee and as the Chair of the Community Engagement Committee at Mayo Clinic Florida, she is actively engaged in research that focuses on the intersection of neurology and palliative care and aims to improve the quality of life for people with neurologic diseases. Dr. Robinson has spoken nationally and internationally on neuropalliative care, she edited a book titled “Case Studies in Neuropalliative Care,” and she is a member of the American Board of Internal Medicine Hospice and Palliative Medicine Approval Committee.

Dr. Creutzfeldt is Associate Professor of Neurology at the University of Washington/Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. She spent her preclinical years at Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen in Germany, and received her MD from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. She then came to the University of Washington, where she did her Neurology Residency and a Vascular Neurology Fellowship. As a Vascular Neurologist and Neurointensivist with postgraduate palliative care training, Dr. Creutzfeldt's clinical and research interests focus on patients with severe acute vascular brain injury, which includes patients with moderate to severe ischemic stroke, intraparenchymal hemorrhage, and hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy after cardiac arrest. She is currently Co-PI on two NIH R01s, she co-edited a textbook on neuropalliative care and, together with Drs. Robinson, Kluger, and Holloway, co-founded the International Neuropalliative Care Society in 2020. Her research and publications include both quantitative and qualitative research methods, with an overall goal to better understand the palliative care needs of patients with serious neurological illness and their families and to improve care, communication, and quality of life. Her expertise in stroke and palliative care has been recognized by multiple invited presentations on this topic at national and international meetings including the International Stroke Conference, the European Stroke Organization Conference, the American Academy of Neurology, and the Neurocritical Care Society, as well as her service on the writing committee for the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association Scientific Statement on Palliative and End of Life Care in Stroke (2014).

We greatly appreciate the efforts of Drs. Robinson and Creutzfeldt, as well as all of the contributing authors, for their wonderful work in this issue of Seminars. I do not believe that Seminars in Neurology has put forth an issue on palliative care in the past, and thus this work is long overdue and most welcome. Palliative care touches nearly every subspecialty of neurology, and yet the amount of education and training in this area during residency and fellowship is sparse at best. Drs. Robinson and Creutzfeldt and their carefully selected authors provide tremendous insights that I suspect every reader will find useful and improve the care of their patients and their loved ones. I would like to personally thank Drs. Robinson and Creutzfeldt for their dedication and prudence with this work, which is a great addition to our field. We hope you enjoy this marvelous issue!

Article published online:
17 October 2024

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