For his decades of research and teaching in long-term care, including the initial study that led the federal government to establish a hospice benefit, Vincent Mor received the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization’s Distinguished Researcher Award Sept. 27, 2013. Mor, the Florence Pirce Grant Professor of Community Health, was just two years out of graduate school when he was chosen to lead a Medicare evaluation of hospice care at 26 sites in the 1980s. “Study results revealed that terminal cancer patients in hospice experienced comparable levels of symptom control and quality of life, their family members were more satisfied with the care received than was the case for usual care patients, and they had less ‘regret’ about the type of care received in the last weeks of life,” Mor said. “Hospice patients’ use of inpatient care was much lower, and hospice cost less than usual care, as long as the patients didn’t enter hospice 'too early' relative to their date of death.” Congress enacted the benefit legislation in 1982 and for the last 30 years, the government has funded palliative care.