Michael W. Rabow, MD, FAAHPM, is a Professor of Clinical Medicine and Urology in the Division of Palliative Medicine Medicine, Department of Medicine, at the University of California, San Francisco. He is the inaugural recipient of the Helen Diller Family Chair in Palliative Care. Board-certified in internal medicine and hospice & palliative care, Dr. Rabow is founding director of a leading outpatient palliative care consultation program-- the Symptom Management Service-- at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is also the founding director of the UCSF/Bakar Hospital Palliative Care Consultation Service.

After receiving his undergraduate degree with summa cum laude honors from Harvard College, Dr. Rabow attended UCSF for medical school and general internal medicine residency training. He completed fellowships at UCSF in general medicine, as well as in medical education research.

96. Rabow is the Associate Director of the UCSF Palliative Care Leadership Center (PCLC) and a member of the curriculum development committee for the PCLC Initiative nationally. The PCLC Initiative has trained more than 1500 hospital-based palliative care programs in the United States. Previously, Dr. Rabow helped direct the California Hospital Initiative in Palliative Services, the first program to support the development of hospital-based palliative care services in California. In additional, Dr. Rabow served as a technical advisor and member of the leadership team for the Archstone Foundation’s Hospital-Based Palliative Care Service Innovations project.

Dr. Rabow is a member of the UCSF Academy of Medical Educators. He was Assistant Editor for the bimonthly section in the Journal of the American Medical Association entitled “Perspectives on Care at the Close of Life.” This series also appears as a palliative care textbook, Care at the Close of Life. He serves as the Director of the Center for the Study of the Healer’s Art at the Remen Institute for the Study of Health and Illness at Wright State University. Dr. Rabow is the Associate Editor of the world’s best-selling annually-updated general medicine textbook, Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment.

Dr. Rabow is the executive producer of “The Caregivers” documentary film and accompanying family caregiver handbook. He has written and taught widely about family caregiving and communication with patients and families around serious news and existential issues at the end-of-life.

Dr. Rabow served as a Soros Foundation Project on Death in America Faculty Scholar and has been recognized for his work in palliative care as a 2012 recipient of the Cunniff-Dixon Foundation Physicians Award from the Hastings Center. Dr. Rabow was selected as the winner of the 2017 AAHPM PDIA National Palliative Care Leadership Award.