Dr. Martha Twaddle combines nearly thirty years of experience in the care of seriously ill people and their families in a variety of areas of service. She currently serves as the Medical Director for Palliative Medicine & Supportive Care at Northwestern Lake Forest Hospital north of Chicago. Her academic work includes developing curriculum guidelines to facilitate the training of healthcare professionals to provide home-based primary care through Home Centered Care Institute’s national Centers of Excellence. In addition, at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, she works with teams that are evaluating the impact of communication skills training on healthcare culture and creating and testing systems of care for seriously ill people and their families across settings of care. As Senior Medical Advisor for Aspire Health, she focuses on education and quality. She was most recently appointed as Co-Chair for the National Consensus Project for Community-based Palliative Care, representing the American Academy of Hospice & Palliative Medicine.
Dr. Twaddle’s unique talents and contributions to the field of Palliative Medicine have helped increase the understanding of and access to this continuum of care, regionally and nationally. In 2013, she was named one of the 30 most influential visionaries in Hospice and Palliative Medicine by nomination of her peers via the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM). She served as President of the AAHPM from 2002-2003 and on the AAHPM Board of Directors from 1997–2004. She represented the AAHPM in the creation of the initial NCP Guidelines published in 2004. She was honored with the inaugural AAHPM Josefina B. Magno Distinguished Hospice Physician Award in 2005. She was recognized in 2016 as a Distinguished Alumni of Purdue’s College of Science and “an exemplary educator and pioneering contributor to end-of-life care” as the recipient of the Compassion in Action Award by Hospice of the Valley and Santa Clara University in 2015.
After graduating summa cum laude from Purdue University, Dr. Twaddle received her medical degree from the Indiana University School of Medicine in Indianapolis and completed her residency in Internal Medicine through Northwestern University McGaw School of Medicine, where she was Chief Resident. She currently serves as an Associate Professor of Medicine for Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine and is board certified in Internal Medicine and Hospice and Palliative Medicine.
Dr. Twaddle is active in curriculum development and education to enhance the competencies of generalist, champion, and specialty level Palliative care at a local and national level, actively participates in quality research and pilots to evaluate models of care delivery, speaks regularly to local and national groups and is published extensively in peer-reviewed articles and other publications.
Contributions to Humans & Nature:
- Nature’s Nurturing and Healing Impact
From Minding Nature’s January 2013, Volume 6, Number 1 issue.
Noteworthy Links:
- JourneyCare
Learn more about JourneyCare and the work they do.
