Michael W. Rabow BA, MD, FAAHPM

Michael W. Rabow, MD, FAAHPM, is a Professor of Clinical Medicine and Urology in the Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine, at the University of California, San Francisco. He is the inaugural recipient of the Helen Diller Family Chair in Palliative Care. Board-certified in internal medicine and hospice & palliative care, Dr. Rabow is founding director of a leading outpatient palliative care consultation program-- the Symptom Management Service-- at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center. He is also the founding director of the UCSF/Mount Zion Hospital Palliative Care Consultation Service. After receiving her undergraduate degree with summa cum laude honors from Harvard College, Dr. Rabow attended UCSF for medical school and general internal medicine residency training.

He completed fellowships at UCSF in general medicine, as well as in medical education research. Dr. Rabow is the Associate Director of the UCSF Palliative Care Leadership Center (PCLC) and a member of the curriculum development committee for the PCLC Initiative nationally. The PCLC Initiative has trained more than 1000 hospital-based palliative care programs in the United States. Previously, Dr. Rabow helped direct the California Hospital Initiative in Palliative Services, the first program to support the development of hospital-based palliative care services in California. In additional, Dr. Rabow served as a technical advisor and member of the leadership team for the Archstone Foundation’s Hospital-Based Palliative Care Service Innovations project.

Dr. Rabow is a member of the UCSF Academy of Medical Educators. He was Assistant Editor for the bimonthly section in the Journal of the American Medical Association entitled “Perspectives on Care at the Close of Life.” This series now appears as a palliative care textbook, Care at the Close of Life. He serves as the Director of the Center for the Study of the Healer’s Art at the Institute for the Study of Health and Illness at Commonweal in California. Dr. Rabow is the Assistant Editor of the world’s best-selling annually-updated general medicine textbook, Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment.