LaVera Crawley

Current Research Interests

I am exploring the role of spirituality and religion as an intervention for improving outcomes and health delivery in three clinical domains: end-of-life care; cancer; and conditions causing cognitive impairment.

To this end, I completed a sabbatical undertaking a one-year Clinical Pastoral Residency for chaplaincy training at the Alta Bates Summit Medical Center (2011 - 2012) with the goals: to develop skills in providing spiritual companionship to patients; to broaden my competencies as a clinical ethicist; and to incubate new research ideas regarding spirituality and the clinical role of chaplains in healthcare settings. My primary clinical assignments were the adolescent and geriatric in-patient psychiatric wards; the out-patient cancer center; the in-patient oncology unit; the critical care units; and the adult rehab unit.

I continue to serve as an ethics advisor at the CDC and I bring over a decade of work at Stanford exploring the intersections of inclusion, identity, and health disparities using a range of research methods and approaches across ethics topics. As an empirical bioethicist, my previous work focused on social justice issues (broadly) and, more specifically, on health disparities and disease prevention among ethnic minority populations. To date, specific areas of my work have included: race-based disparities in palliative and end-of-life care; the impact of perceived medical discrimination on cancer screening behaviors among ethnic minority adults; disparities in patterns of direct-to-consumer advertising; and a community-based participatory research project on pediatric bereavement in partnership with the East Bay Agency for Children Circle of Care Program. I also completed a study on knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and health and information-seeking behavior regarding the HPV vaccine among young adults and youth, employing an innovative strategy of social media research. The latter included analyzing types of information and misinformation spread through the internet focusing on the role of vaccine related conspiracy theories on HPV vaccine uptake. I still hold interest in developing new transdisciplinary scholarship on defining effective and equitable representation in public engagement activities and welcome collaborators.

Methodologically, I often use mixed-model and mixed-methods designs including: qualitative empirical methods (ethnography, grounded theory, narrative research); quantitative data collection and analysis; and innovative analytic techniques such as multiple correspondence analysis, text mining, and social network analysis.