Renowned Physician, Author to Speak at Palliative Care Conference

Sunita Puri, a palliative medicine physician and author whose work has appeared in the New York Times, will be the keynote speaker at the fifth annual Professional Palliative Care Conference on the campus of Cal State San Marcos.  

The conference will take place on Friday, July 8 from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. It is being held for the first time since 2019 after the last two editions were canceled because of the pandemic.   

Puri is the medical director of palliative medicine and supportive care at the Keck Hospital and Norris Cancer Center of the University of Southern California. She’s the author of the 2020 book “That Good Night: Life and Medicine in the Eleventh Hour,” and just last month her essay titled “My Patient Didn’t Die From Covid. He Died Because of It” was published by the New York Times.  

Puri graduated from Yale University, attended Oxford University as a Rhodes scholar, completed medical school and residency training in internal medicine at UC San Francisco, and went through fellowship training in hospice and palliative medicine at Stanford University.  

The first 100 tickets to the conference sold will include a complimentary copy of her book.  

The Professional Palliative Care Conference enables San Diego-area palliative care professionals to meet, expand their networks, share best practices and learn from one another. It’s presented by the San Diego Coalition for Compassionate Care and hosted by the Shiley Haynes Institute for Palliative Care at CSUSM.  The conference theme this year is “Building Bridges: Connecting our Communities to Palliative Care.” The program will center on serving the needs of diverse communities, specific patient populations and traditionally underserved populations, particularly in the context of the ongoing pandemic. Panels, workshops and presentations will provide resources for palliative care professionals working in different care settings across disciplines.  

 To register for the conference or to learn more about it, go to https://www.sandiegocccare.org.