An Editor-In-Chief’s Journey: Dr. Drew Rosielle’s Fabulous Contributions to Fast Facts & Concepts

Fast Facts and Concepts was started in 2000 by Eric Warm, MD, as a palliative care teaching tool for internal medicine residents at the University of Cincinnati. In the early 2000s David Weissman, MD, at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, developed a comprehensive, freely available, national palliative care education center, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, called the National End-of-Life Residency Education Project (EPERC). As part of EPERC, David Weissman took on the role of editor for Fast Facts, publishing them through the ELNEC website. Early on, he also initiated the co-publication of Fast Facts in the Journal of Palliative Medicine, where he served as the founding editor. David Weissman assembled an editorial board for Fast Facts, started a peer-review process for them, formalized Fast Facts’ format, and is the primary person responsible for making Fast Facts the high-impact, internationally recognized, free, grassroots, education tool they remain today.

Important early collaborators include Judith Rehm who was the project manager for ELNEC, Lisa Pelzek-Braun the managing editor of JPM, and Mary Ann Liebert the publisher of JPM who supported the relatively unusual phenomenon Fast Facts has always enjoyed being cross-published in a Medline-listed journal. I started peer-reviewing Fast Facts in 2006, and in 2007 David Weissman asked me to become their editor-in-chief, as he began the process of winding down his career in palliative medicine. At that time, I was a faculty member at the Medical College of Wisconsin. I edited Fast Facts until 2015 when I asked Dr. Sean Marks, also of MCW, to take over as their lead editor, and Sean Marks has been their chief editor to this day. I continue to be an associate editor and edit several Fast Facts each year.

Initially me, now Sean Marks, both made deliberate efforts to make Fast Facts more explicitly evidence-based and transparent (e.g., discussing levels of evidence, improving citations, and keeping a transparent edit history in each Fast Fact as they’ve been edited and updated over the years). Sean has also brought on additional associate editors over the years, as well as diversified our peer review panel to better reflect the broad professional expertise which makes up our heterogeneous field of hospice and palliative care.

Around 2012 the funding for EPERC ran out and for two years the Center to Advance Palliative Care kindly hosted the website of Fast Facts. In 2015, the then-newly formed Palliative Care Network of Wisconsin agreed to be the major home of Fast Facts and has hosted and digitally published them ever since. PCNOW has been a stable, supportive collaborator and host for Fast Facts for which I’m deeply grateful.

Fast Facts are peer-reviewed by a panel of volunteer reviewers, who every month selflessly give Fast Facts a little of their time to provide feedback to the editors on every Fast Fact, a process which is laborious but always leads to a stronger, clearer, more accurate Fast Fact. These peer reviewers are the unsung heroes of Fast Facts and I continue to be astonished by their generosity.

No history of Fast Facts could also be complete without mentioning the contributions of Dr. Robert Arnold, long of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and as of 2024 Mt Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. Dr. Arnold has peer-reviewed nearly every Fast Fact that has ever been published, undoubtedly more than any single person, and has co-authored dozens of them, and been a constant champion of our publication. Fast Facts continues to be an all-volunteer, grassroots, minimally funded labor of love of several dozen people to get timely, high-quality, evidence-based palliative care content out to readers across the world. At every meeting with palliative care professionals across the country, someone inevitably approaches me to express their gratitude for Fast Facts. They share stories of how a Fast Fact once made a significant impact on a patient’s care or helped a colleague in a critical moment.

It’s been a huge privilege to be part of the team that helps create Fast Facts, and I’m grateful for David Weissman, Sean Marks, and all who have allowed me to be a part of Fast Facts.