News Center

Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center Senior Analyst J. Brian Cassel, Ph.D., was recently named a Fulbright Scholar by the United States Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. Cassel will depart in early 2012 for London, where for six months he will collaborate with researchers at the King's College London Cicely Saunders Institute to measure the economic impact of end-of-life care in the U.K. and U.S.

Working with an interdisciplinary team of academics, Cassel will focus his research on creating a new framework to identify the best approaches for measuring the outcomes of palliative care across the U.K. and U.S. health care systems, across various forms of palliative care and from various perspectives, such as patient, family, physician, hospital, insurer and society.

"I am honored to work with Dr. Irene Higginson and her colleagues at King's College London," said Cassel. "They lead one of the largest and best palliative care centers in the world, and this Fulbright award offers the opportunity for us to develop a long-term, collaborative relationship that fosters continued international research on the outcomes of palliative care in various forms and settings."

Recipients of Fulbright awards are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement, as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. The Fulbright Program, America's flagship international educational exchange program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, seeks to promote mutual understanding and respect between American citizens and people of other countries.

As senior analyst at VCU Massey Cancer Center, Cassel provides strategic planning, program evaluation, quality assurance and financial analyses of all oncology-related programs, including palliative care, at VCU Medical Center. Cassel also is a cancer prevention and control researcher at Massey, and his research focuses on the clinical and financial outcomes of cancer services and palliative care programs. His analyses of the outcomes of palliative care have been published in journal articles and chapters as well as in The Wall Street Journal. A member of the Palliative Care Leadership Center at Massey, he trains teams from hospitals across the country in establishing and sustaining palliative care programs. In addition, Cassel holds faculty appointments with VCU Life Sciences and the VCU School of Medicine, where he teaches courses on health care ethics and science and religion studies. He received his B.S. degree at Elizabethtown College and his Ph.D. in psychology at City University of New York.

Written by: Massey Communications Office