Dr. Emma Belanger is Associate Professor of Health Services, Policy & Practice at the Center for Gerontology and Healthcare Research, Brown University School of Public Health. Her background includes training in both social and health sciences. She obtained her Ph.D. from the Departments of Psychiatry and Family Medicine at McGill University. Her doctoral dissertation was a qualitative study about patient participation in palliative care decisions. She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Montreal Public Health Research Institute in social epidemiology of aging. 

Dr. Belanger’s has expertise in mixed-methods and her research program focuses on the delivery of palliative and end-of-life care in a variety of healthcare settings, and the assessment and management of patient-reported symptoms among older adults with life-limiting illnesses. Funded by the National Institute on Aging, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and various foundations, she has over a decade of experience conducting research that aims to improve the quality of late-life years and end-of-life care in the context of an aging population.

Since joining the Center for Gerontology and Healthcare Research at Brown University in 2017, she has contributed to numerous grants on these topics and has been leading an R01 examining the determinants end-of-life experiences in assisted living, combining analysis of Medicare claims data, a nationally representative survey of assisted living administrators, and in-depth interviews bereaved next of kin to provide a comprehensive assessment of end-of-life care provided in long-term care. She is also co-PI of one project on a recently awarded Program Project renewal, leading work about end-of-life care outcomes among Medicare Advantage beneficiaries with dementia who received care from plans participating in the VBID Hospice Benefit Component.