The $750,000 investment of the Cambia Health Foundation, alongside grants in the amount of $3.5 million from The John A. Hartford Foundation, will support the project, “Building Public Engagement and Access to Palliative and End-of-Life Care.” With the goal of improving the way health care professionals and patients understand and approach serious illness care, this initiative will disseminate evidence-based innovations and coordinated communications to reshape public attitude toward palliative care, advance care planning, and hospice so that more people can live well – from diagnosis, through treatment, to cure, or end of life.

With the participation of seven leading organizations, this three-year project aims to:

• Create messaging for the seven national organizations and other key stakeholders that will help build public and health care provider understanding of serious illness and end-of-life care.
• Provide core support to enable the seven organizations to scale their operations and increase their capacity to meet the needs of more people.

The seven participating organizations are: Ariadne Labs/Serious Illness Care Program, the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC), the Coalition to Transform Advanced Care (C-TAC), Respecting Choices, The Conversation Project, the National POLST Paradigm, and VitalTalk. Subcontracted organizations include the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM), the National Coalition for Hospice and Palliative Care (The Coalition) and the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO).

These organizations will work in coordination with the grantee, the Cambia Palliative Care Center of Excellence at the University of Washington, to spread public messaging through newsletter messages, national seminar sessions, presentations, video blogs, convenings, and public reporting. In a prior phase of this grant, the seven organizations worked together and with other stakeholders on CareLab, a transformative scenario planning resource that invites every participant in serious illness and end-of-life care to find next generation solutions.

The John A. Hartford Foundation and the Cambia Health Foundation encourage other funders to join the Serious Illness and End-of-Life Funders Collaborative organized by Grantmakers in Aging to keep up-to-date on this project and other initiatives that can help improve serious illness and end-of-life care. Grantmaking organizations interested in joining the funders collaborative should email Emily Baransy, Director of Operations & Program Development, Grantmakers in Aging at ebaransy@giaging.org.