Maureen E. Lyon, PhD., ABPP, is a licensed and Board-Certified Clinical Health Psychologist within the Center for Translational Research of Children’s Research Institute; and the Rare Disease Institute and Center for Genetic Medicine Research at Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C.  Dr. Lyon’s research and interests focus on the study of palliative care and advance care planning for persons living with a serious illness. Dr. Lyon is especially interested in how religious and spiritual beliefs, values, and coping influence the well-being of persons living with a serious illness. Most recently Dr. Lyon has been studying an intervention, FACE-Rare, to better meet the psychosocial support needs of family caregivers of children with rare diseases to minimize the impact of adverse social determinants of health, specifically poverty and social isolation.

Dr. Lyon has been the Principal Investigator on multiple randomized clinical trials securing more than $15 million dollars in research awards from the National Institutes of Health, including the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute of Nursing Research, the American Cancer Society, and private foundations. Dr. Lyon’s research has been published in high impact journals, including JAMA Pediatrics and Pediatrics and palliative care specialty journals, such as the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management. Dr. Lyon’s research has been disseminated nationally and internationally. Dr. Lyon is also a certified yoga teacher, wife, and mother of two adult children and two grandchildren.