Dr. Carlson is an Assistant Professor in the Brookdale Department of Geriatrics and Adult Development at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. She is a recipient of a National Institutes of Health Career Development Award and a Brookdale Foundation Leadership in Aging Fellowship. She is a past recipient of an Olive Branch Scholar Award from the National Palliative Care Research Center in New York.

Dr. Carlson's research focuses on the quality of hospice and palliative care services and access to services for older adults with serious illness. Specifically, she has evaluated the effect of hospice agency characteristics (e.g., for-profit or nonprofit ownership and Medicare certification status) on the quality of hospice care and was the first to document substantial variation across hospice agencies nationally in the quality of care delivered to patients and families including nursing care, physician care, medication management, psychosocial care (i.e., bereavement care, spiritual counseling), and caregiver support. She has also studied the issue of hospice dis-enrollment and the impact of the timing of hospice enrollment on the well-being of caregivers of seriously ill older adults.

Dr. Carlson earned a doctorate from Yale University in the Division of Health Policy and Administration with a concentration in Health Economics. Prior to pursuing her doctorate at Yale University, Dr. Carlson was an assistant epidemiologist at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, while earning an M.P.H. from Columbia University. Dr. Carlson also holds an M.B.A. from New York University's Stern School of Business and a B.A. in mathematics and economics from the College of the Holy Cross.