Dr. Sarah Nebel Pederson is the Community Relations Director at Morning Pointe Assisted Living. Sarah earned her PhD from the Uni­versity of Iowa, in interpersonal and family communication at the end-of-life. Her research interests focus on cultural understandings of death and dying and identity constructions in illness narratives. Sarah previously served as a manager of a nonmedi­cal home health company, where she worked with older adults and trained families and caregivers in Alzheimer’s and other dementias as well as hospice care. Sarah also worked as a chaplain at an assisted living facility and has volun­teered with hospices ranging across the United States.

Sarah’s work has been published in multiple scholarly journals including Quali­tative Inquiry, Death Studies, and the Journal of Hospice and Palliative Nursing. She also coauthored book chapters on aesthetic relationships and moral com­munication across the lifespan. She is currently working on a manuscript for her book entitled, The Final Chapter: Understanding How Conceptualizations of the “Good Death” Impact the Dying Process. Sarah moved to Tuscaloosa when her husband Dr. Josh Pederson accepted a position at the University of Alabama as an assistant professor in the Depart­ment of Communication Studies. They has an incredibly talented… hilarious… gorgeous… and compassionate 2-year-old daughter named Esther and a cat named Murphy.