Dr. Kelli Stajduhar, RN, PhD, FCAHS is a professor in the School of Nursing and a research fellow at the Institute on Aging and Lifelong Health at the University of Victoria and research affiliate with Island Health.

Kelli has been a champion of equity in palliative care. Her interest in this developed in her time working as a community nurse with HIV positive patients. She understood directly through her experience that simply providing a service is not enough. People and the social and physical environments in which they live are the contexts in which help and support can be given. Failure to do this in the contact of marginalised communities further excludes them, making worse their sense of marginalisation.

She has worked in oncology, palliative care, and gerontology for almost 30 years as a practicing nurse, educator, and researcher.

Kelli has over 285 academic publications and presentations. She is lead investigator on multiple research projects including international research collaboratives on family caregiving; projects evaluating the integration of a palliative approach in acute and residential care settings, and national studies on access to end-of-life care for structurally vulnerable populations and care experiences of caregivers providing palliative care in the home.