Bio

Alexis Drutchas, MD is a palliative care physician, educator, and writer whose work explores how medicine can make more room for authentic communication, dignity, and human connection. At Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, she serves as Director of the Core Communication Program and is an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, where she develops and teaches programs to help clinicians navigate some of the most consequential conversations in medicine.

Her academic and creative work sits at the intersection of serious illness communication, LGBTQ+ health, storytelling, and community building. She is particularly interested in what happens when we move beyond the technical language of medicine to attend to the stories, values, identities, and relationships that shape how people experience illness and care. Alongside her clinical work, Alexis co-founded The Palliative Story Exchange, an interprofessional storytelling community that brings healthcare clinicians together to share the experiences that we rarely create space for in medicine.

Alexis trained in Family Medicine at Brown University, where she co-founded the Rhode Island Trans Health Conference, which has continued since 2015. She went on to practice primary care at Fenway Health, a nationally recognized LGBTQ+ health center, from 2015–2019. She subsequently completed the Harvard Interprofessional Palliative Care Fellowship Program and spent five years on the inpatient palliative care team at Massachusetts General Hospital before joining Dana-Farber.

As a writer, her work has appeared in The New England Journal of Medicine, CNN, NBC, Health Affairs, and Newsweek, among other publications.

Alexis grew up in the greater Detroit area, Japan, and Hong Kong and now lives in Boston with her wife and their two young sons.

Please contact Alexis directly here. She would be delighted to hear from you!