The UCSF MERI CENTER is dedicated to providing an infrastructure for palliative care in the context of routine medical care. Our goal is to recognize and ensure that patients' wishes for their medical care are both known and honored, as we support them and their caregivers in coping with serious illness. Palliative Care seeks to provide support to people with serious illness at any stage of disease, whether their suffering is physical, emotional or spiritual. This is in concert with whatever medical treatments a person is pursuing. Palliative Care provides pain and symptom management, all the while focusing on the “whole person” and providing a safe space in which to explore the essential questions that face people who are facing mortality: What gives my life meaning? What matters most?