Stephanie Cheng

Dr. Stephanie Cheng is a palliative care specialist who provides supportive care for patients with terminal or life-altering illnesses. She devotes most of her practice to outpatient care in the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center's Symptom Management Service.

Cheng has special interests in holistic management of symptoms and improving quality of life through integrative approaches, especially by taking into consideration the psychosocial and spiritual aspects of wellness. Through Spirit Rock Insight Meditation Center and the Metta Institute, she completed a two-year program that explored illness, aging and death from a contemplative perspective and taught her how to incorporate mindfulness, compassion and other meditative practices into her work with patients and her own daily life. She also completed a chaplaincy training program through the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies.

Cheng serves as one of the principal investigators for a clinical trial evaluating innovative medical visits pairing psycho-oncology and integrative palliative care for patients with advanced cancer. With colleagues at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, she also studies integrative approaches to treating common cancer-related symptoms.

Cheng earned her medical degree at Oregon Health & Science University, then completed a family medicine residency at UCSF-affiliated Contra Costa Regional Medical Center. She completed a fellowship in hospice and palliative medicine, with an integrative medicine focus, at George Washington University.

Outside of work, Cheng enjoys playing music and spending time outdoors. She is in the process of becoming a certified forest therapy guide through the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy and hopes to bring the practice of forest bathing (therapeutic immersion in nature based on the Japanese practice of shinrin-yoku) to her patients and colleagues.