Leadership Award
The Project on Death in America (PDIA) Social Work Leadership Award is given annually to social workers who demonstrate outstanding leadership and have advanced the field in end-of-life, hospice and palliative care. The goal of this new award is to acknowledge and increase the visibility of social workers’ contributions to the field, and encourage future generations to continue providing quality care to the seriously ill, dying and bereaved.
Accepting Nominations
Nominations are now open for 2008.
2007 Awardees
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Debra Parker Oliver, MSW, PhD
Director of Doctoral Studies and Associate Professor
University of Missouri School of Social Work
Debra Parker Oliver is Director of Doctoral Studies and Associate Professor at University of Missouri-Columbia School of Social Work. She has been involved in hospice care for over two decades first as a practitioner and now as a researcher. Her research interests include hospice practice and management, home care, and gerontology and she has nearly 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals.Debra was awarded a National Cancer Institute R-21 Grant Award as Principal Investigator in Patient and Family Participation in Hospice Interdisciplinary Teams, an innovative care strategy aimed at using videophone technology to bring cancer patients and their families into hospice care planning meetings. This is the first NCI grant ever awarded to the University of Missouri School of Social Work.
As director of a small hospice in Minnesota, she provided the leadership necessary for it to become the first free-standing Medicare certified program in Minnesota. She then went on to start Hands of Hope Hospice in Missouri and held other leadership positions in hospice for over ten years. More recently she was a winner of the 2003 Catherine Pouget Award for her contributions towards research on improving quality of life for the terminally ill. In 2004 Debra was selected as a Hartford Foundation Geriatric Social Work Faculty Scholar.
She received Social Work/Sociology dual degrees from Missouri Western State College and both her Master of Social Work Degree and Ph.D. from the University of Missouri.
Shirley Otis-Green, MSW, LCSW, ACSW, OSW-C
Senior Research Specialist, Nursing Research and Education
City of Hope National Medical Center
Shirley Otis-Green is a licensed clinical social worker and Senior Research Specialist in the department of Nursing Research and Education at the City of Hope National Medical Center in Duarte, California. Her clinical work, research, presentations and publications focus on transdisciplinary palliative care and integrated symptom management with a special emphasis upon underserved populations.
Shirley is the Principal Investigator of the ACE Project - Advocating for Clinical Excellence: Transdisciplinary Palliative Care Education, a major 5-year National Cancer Institute R-25 Grant Award for development and implementation of a palliative care educational experience for 300 competitively-selected psycho-oncology professionals to enhance their advocacy, leadership and support skills. She also developed and coordinated the Promoting Excellence in Pain Management & Palliative Care for Social Workers annual training course.
As Clinical Program Manager in the department of Supportive Care, Pain and Palliative Medicine, she created the Transitions Program, which offered psycho-educational support services for those facing end of life, and the Art for the Heart: Hands on Harps Program. Shirley received a Social Work Leadership Award from the Project on Death in America for her work to enhance end-of-life and bereavement support services for Latino oncology patients. She received her Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and her Master of Social Work Degree from the University of Hawaii.
The Call for Nominations for the 2008 award will be distributed in early 2008.