Joanna Hart

Dr. Joanna Hart is an Assistant Professor of Medicine and of Medical Ethics & Health Policy, and Core Faculty at the PAIR Center. She maintains an outpatient pulmonary medicine practice at the Michael J. Crescenz VA Medical Center and provides critical care services at both the VA and Penn Medicine.

Dr. Hart’s research broadly focuses on improving the serious illness experience for patients and families. Her approach recognizes that serious illness affects families, not just patients. She has particular interest in how patients, families, and clinicians communicate with one another; the role families play in supporting patients with serious illnesses; how health systems integrate family members into care; and complex, value-sensitive shared decision making. She uses mixed methods, community-engaged research, longitudinal cohort studies, and clinical trials to advance the well-being of patients and their family members. Through all of her work, Dr. Hart emphasizes health equity and empathy.

Dr. Hart is also deeply committed to the education of the next generation of physicians and health care leaders, particularly those facing structural barriers to their success in medicine. She participates regularly as a mentor in the Penn Access Summer Scholars and Penn LDI’s Summer Undergraduate Mentored Research programs. She regularly teaches on family-centered care, decision making, end-of-life ethics, and humanism in medicine to medical students and colleagues. In recognition of her mentorship, research, and other academic work, she was awarded the Radhika Srinivasan Award for Humanism and Professionalism in Medicine by Penn and Early Career and Mid-Career Achievement Awards from the American Thoracic Society.

Dr. Hart received her undergraduate degree in sociology from Northwestern University and completed a concurrent certificate program in academic-based community service. She earned her medical degree from the University of Virginia and completed her internal medicine, pulmonary, and critical care training at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She also earned a Master of Science in Health Policy Research from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Hart proudly lives and works in the diverse West Philadelphia community.