Dr. Liz Dzeng leads a vibrant, interdisciplinary research group at UCSF operating at the nexus of the social sciences, ethics, and clinical medicine. Our team’s research weaves together approaches from sociology, medical ethics, end-of-life care, anti-racism, and human-centered design to offer new perspectives on critical challenges within contemporary healthcare, particularly those related to health equity and quality of end-of-life care. Broadly speaking, our group seeks to understand how broader social and structural contexts influence access to healthcare and the quality of care.

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Two major themes animate our research endeavors. First, we explore the influence of institutional culture on end-of-life care across diverse healthcare settings. Through large-scale comparative ethnographic studies in the United States and the United Kingdom, we seek to understand how institutional and cultural factors impact clinicians’ ethical frameworks, communication, and clinical approaches in end-of-life care. We have used the results of this study to design interventions to mitigate potentially non-beneficial life-sustaining treatments near the end of life in older adults with advanced dementia using human-centered design. Second, our community-based participatory research program endeavors to understand—and resist—how structural racism affects the provision of end-of-life care for older Black adults. Driven by our commitment to translate our research into tangible improvements in healthcare experiences, we are engaged in designing and implementing interventions to foster high-quality, equitable, and anti-racist care at UCSF and beyond.