Jennifer Reidy, MD, MS, FAAHPM
Chief of the Division of Palliative Care, UMass Memorial Health Care
Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts Medical School
Dr. Jennifer Reidy is Chief of the Division of Palliative Care at UMass Memorial Health Care, and Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Dr. Reidy has a master’s degree in journalism from the Columbia University School of Journalism and formerly worked as a newspaper reporter. She is passionate about language and relationships in medicine. She has developed innovative curricula to teach goals-of-care conversations with patient actors at UMass Medical School, which has become mandatory training for internal medicine and neurology residents, as well as 4th-year medical students.
Dr. Reidy is currently working as physician leader on a statewide initiative of Massachusetts’ medical schools to train students in serious illness conversations as a graduation requirement.
Dr. Reidy is a UMass Quality Scholar and has led interdisciplinary teams to engage patients and clinicians in advance care planning and create better systems to manage pain in hospitalized patients.
Since 2005, she has served as co-chair and faculty at national conferences of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. In addition to teaching awards, UMass medical students and faculty recognized Dr. Reidy with the Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine award from the Arnold P. Gold Foundation in 2015.
This year, she was named the Joy McCann Professor for Women in Medicine, an endowed three-year position at UMass Medical School. Dr. Reidy is also program director of the new UMass Palliative Medicine Fellowship which began
in October 2020.