Dr. Mohana Karlekar is medical director of the palliative care program at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, associate program director for the hospice and palliative care fellowship and assistant professor of medicine in the Division of General Medicine and Public Health at Vanderbilt University. She has been on faculty at VUMC for 12 years.

Her area of expertise is the intersection of palliative care, trauma and cystic fibrosis, and she has published and presented nationally on the topic. In 2018, she served on the Tennessee Palliative Care and Quality of Life Task Force. She currently serves as chair of the Tennessee state palliative care council, and is a member of the advisory group for the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma’s palliative care committee.

Prior to joining the faculty at Vanderbilt University, Karlekar served as program director for the internal medicine residency program at Woodhull Medical and Mental Health Center, where she also directed the institution’s palliative care consultative service.

Karlekar received her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and medical degree from the State University of New York at Stony Brook. She completed her internship and residency at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York City. During her residency training she worked with renowned palliative care leader Dr. R. Sean Morrison and acquired her passion for palliative care and geriatric medicine.

Karlekar has received the Hugh Jackson Morgan Teaching Award and Leonard Tow Humanism in Medicine Award, and she is an honoree in the Alpha Omega Association. She has presented and published on palliative care topics both nationally and internationally.