Veronica Dussel is Assistant Investigator for the Department of Pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital, and Associate Research Scientist at Dana-Faber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. She coordinates several academic and research projects in the US, Latin America, and Argentina with the common goal of increasing access to palliative care and improving quality of life for children with life-threatening illnesses. Her work gave place to several published articles that have significantly influenced the field, including the first randomized controlled trial to evaluate a palliative care intervention in children with advanced cancer, the description of “normalization” as a key barrier to symptom management, and studies that have evaluated parents’ perspectives on location of death and hastened death, as well as the economic impact of pediatric cancer on families. The results of many of these articles have been incorporated into international guidelines or recommendations.
Dr. Dussel also collaborates with different international research initiatives to develop indicators for palliative care in children, as well as a research network with a focus on advancing pediatric palliative care in Latin America. She leads the Latin American version of the EPEC-Pediatrics course, which recently joined the Pan-American Health Organization and St. Jude’s Research Hospital to continue to multiply palliative care training across the region.
Prior to her current positions at Massachusetts General Hospital and Dana-Faber/Boston Children’s Cancer and Blood Disorders Center, Dr. Dussel was Director for the Center for Research and Implementation in Palliative Care (CII-CP) at the Institute of Clinical Effectiveness and Health Policy (IECS) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She earned her medical degree from the University of Buenos Aires School of Medicine and completed a master’s degree in public health/quantitative methods at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. Following her pediatrics residency, she joined the nascent Palliative Care Unit at Hospital Garrahan, a tertiary level pediatric hospital in the city of Buenos Aires, where she was one of the first appointed attending pediatric palliative care physicians in Argentina.
She has acted as a consultant for public organizations, including the National Cancer Institute of Argentina. Dr. Dussel has been an active member of the Argentinean Palliative Medicine Association, the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine, and the National Committee for Pediatric Palliative Care of the Argentinean Society of Pediatrics. In Argentina, she is part of the accreditation board of the pediatric palliative care subspecialty and has participated in the design and implementation of a task force to define the core competencies for pediatric palliative care physicians.
Dr. Dussel joined the IAHPC Board in January 2023.
She enjoys spending time with family and friends, cooking, traveling, and reading.