Dr. Prigerson has studied psychosocial factors that influence the quality of life and care received by terminally ill patients and factors influencing caregiver adjustment both before and after the death of a loved one since her dissertation work at Stanford in the late 1980s.  She completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Epidemiology of Aging at Yale University and then was funded by the NIMH for a K-award to study psychosocial factors in bereavement-related depression while an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh.

In 1997, she returned to Yale as Assistant Professor in Psychiatry where she received three NIH R01 grants to conduct a DSM field trial of consensus criteria for Complicated Grief, a psychiatric epidemiologic longitudinal prospective study of advanced cancer patients and the caregivers that survived them, and a study of psychosocial factors influencing ethnic disparities in end-of-life care and bereavement adjustment.  During this time she was promoted to Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Associate Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health.

Dr. Prigerson then moved to Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to assume leadership of the Center for Psychology and Palliative Care Research, with an academic appointment as Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School. She is involved with a wide variety of research projects including DSM-V field trials for Prolonged Grief Disorder, intervention studies for Prolonged Grief, and an NCI and NIMH funded multi-site prospective cohort study of advanced cancer patients and their family caregivers who survive them (the Coping with Cancer study.) The Coping with Cancer study has generated a program of research that has included examination of: ethnic disparities in and mediators of end of life care; the effects of prognostic discussions on patients' emotional and cognitive acceptance of their terminal illness, healthcare and the costs of healthcare received in the last week of life; studies of factors predicting patient end of life treatment preferences, quality of death, and surviving caregiver bereavement adjustment.