Committee

Tanja Krones was educated as physician and sociologist at the University of Marburg (Germany). Inspired by her mentor Gerd Richter who worked with John Fletcher at the University of Virginia as clinical ethicists she conducted several research projects in the field of ethics and worked as co chair of the IRB and as clinical ethicist.

Since 2009, she serves as Head of the Clinical Ethics Unit at the University Hospital Zurich, associated with the Institute of Biomedical Ethics and History of Medicine at the University of Zurich.

During her work, she became aware of the problems of good  patient-centred car, when patients turn  incapable of decision-making. This led to her current main  research and practice interest of promoting Advance Care Planning in research and practice. She was the principle Investigator of the MAPS (Multiprofessional Advance Care Planning and Shared Decision Making ) – trial funded by the Swiss national science foundation, and is member of the German and Swiss national Task forces for implementing Advance Care Planning nationwide.

In 2012 she joined the former ACPEL society and has been selected as President of ACP-i in September 2017.

Bernard “Bud” Hammes was educated at the University of Notre Dame, receiving his BA in 1972 and his PhD in philosophy in 1978. He has taught at the University of Gonzaga in Spokane, Washington and at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse.

Since 1984, he has served as the Director of Medical Humanities and Respecting Choices® for the Gundersen Lutheran Medical Foundation and the Gundersen Lutheran Medical Center in La Crosse, Wisconsin. In this position he provides educational programs for house staff, medical students, nursing student and physician assistant students. He also provides in-services and workshops for the medical staff, nursing staff, social workers, and the pastoral care department. Dr. Hammes chairs both the Institutional Review Board and Ethics Committee. For the Institutional Ethics Committee he serves the role of ethics consultant.

Dr. Hammes is a Professor of Clinical Science at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse and an Associate Adjunct Professor of the Institute for Health and Society at the Medical College of Wisconsin and a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health.

Dr. Hammes’ work has been primarily focused on improving care at the end-of-life. To this end he has developed institutional policies and practices, staff education, and patient/community education with a special focus on advance care planning. This work has resulted in two nationally recognized programs on advance care planning: If I Only Knew… and Respecting Choices®. He has authored or coauthored 40 articles and book chapters that are focused on clinical ethics, advance care planning, and end-of-life issues. Currently he serves as the Chair of the National POLST Paradigm Task Force.

For more information about Respecting Choices go to respectingchoices.org.

Craig is a postdoctoral health researcher with training in psychology. He has been actively engaged in advance care planning research in Australia since 2010, with experience in clinical trials, quality improvement initiatives, and engagement with culturally diverse communities in Australia. His recent work has focused on the emerging topic of supported decision-making, exploring its implications for human rights-based approaches to advance care planning, in particular among people with dementia and other age-related cognitive disabilities.

Kornelia Götze is a family practitioner and palliative care specialist working part-time in a ambulant specialised palliative care team in Marburg (Germany). She works part time as lecturer and researcher at the department of General Practice at the university hospital of Düsseldorf. In this function, she coordinates the multicentred research project BEVOR implementing a comprehensive regional ACP program in 4 different regions in 45 German nursing homes with a grant of the Innovationsfonds of the GBA (2019-2023), and she is committed to the training of ACP-facilitators and ACP-trainers and further regional implementation of ACP programs in Germany. She is the secretary of the German Interprofessional society of ACP (DiV-BVP).

Over the last two decades, Cari’s unwavering upstream ACP vision has provided her the opportunity to support and influence local, provincial, national and international ACP programs. She is the founder and chair of the Canadian National ACP Community of Practice and an appointed member of the Canadian National ACP Task Group. She has co-created a variety of health care provider resources including clinical practice guidelines, policies and public resources which have been adapted in various organizations across the world. Cari has authored two chapters and completed a thesis exploring the impact of clinicians understanding of health law on ACP. She is extremely proud to be leading the largest ACP team in Canada, focusing on proactive systems level implementation.

Cari believes her collaborative spirit, systems-level upstream thinking will compliment the diverse Committee membership at ACP-i.

Cristina is Graduated in Nursing, Graduated in Humanities, master's degree in Palliative Care and PhD in Health and Social Sciences of the University of Vic. For over her professional career, her area of interest has been palliative care. She was always concern about how to respect patients’ autonomy at the end of life. She has clinical experience related to palliative care, teaching basic, intermediate and advanced training, and developing public palliative care programs. In 2014 she was responsible to coordinate the Catalan Model of Advance Care Planning. She currently works as the head of public programmes in geriatrics and palliative care at the Department of Health of the Government of Catalonia. She is a co-founder of the Spanish Association for Advance Healthcare Planning, of which she has been vice-president since 2025. She has contributed to the development of various materials and resources on Advance Healthcare Planning (AHP), including the first online course on AHP in two languages, Spanish and Catalan. She is passionate about Advance Healthcare Planning and Palliative Care and is convinced that both represent the best way to provide dignified care for people who are unwell and for their families and loved ones.

Cheng-Pei is an oncology nurse and palliative care researcher, originally from Taiwan. He completed his PhD training in palliative care at Cicely Saunders Institute, King’s College London, UK in 2020. His research focuses are on culture adaptation on advance care planning, medical decision-making and palliative care for cancer patients. He is now working as an assistant professor in nursing at the Institute of Community Health Care, College of Nursing, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taipei, TAIWAN. He has been involved in advance care planning research worldwide with experience in mixed-method research, qualitative interviews and engagement with low and middle income countries on global palliative care evaluation project funded by WHO. His recent works are two folds: first is to develop a definition and key elements of advance care planning among six Asian sectors (i.e. Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea and Indonesia) adopting Delphi consensus method. Second is to explore the awareness and perception of advance care planning among older people with chronic illness in the community in Taiwan though in-depth qualitative interviews with stakeholders.

Henriette Burger has been a leader in ACP teaching in South Africa. Her research focusses on the cultural acceptability of ACP tools in SA. By serving on the ACP-i board she hopes to bring the unique challenges of ACP implementation in Africa and other LMICs to the fore, and work with other ACP champions to find innovative solutions to improve global access to ACP”.