ABCD Exchange : April 2000 : QuickScan - News in Brief

Upfront - Wit : A Night of Conversation
President's Letter - Organizing Care Around the Way Life Is Lived
Public Policy - Government to Study Medicare Hospice Benefits
Public Policy - Attorneys General National Work Group on EOL
Lunch Bunch - Medicaring Update
Correction

News and Notes on End of Life Care

Richmond, VA - The Washington Post reports that the State of Virginia is offering annual $500 grants to family caregivers who are caring for physically or mentally disabled relatives. To date, the Virginia Department of Social Services has received 500 applications for the money. The deadline for the current fiscal year is May 1. The state has budgeted $1.5 million for the project in fiscal 2001. The General Assembly approved the Virginia Caregivers Grant Fund, which is administered through local social services agencies and area agencies on aging.

New York City - The United Hospital Fund awarded $2.1 million in grants to fund six palliative care networks throughout the city as part of its Community-Oriented Palliative Care Initiative. The local networks will focus on continuity of care, social services, spiritual and psychological support for patients and families, and caregiver support for dealing with chronic and eventually fatal disease. The networks are to create partnerships among the city’s hospitals, hospices, long-term care agencies, home health agencies, and various community-based organizations. The Fund hopes that the programs that result will create national models for providing a continuum of care. Grantees are The Bronx Community Health System, The Catholic Health System, Harlem Palliative Care Network, Mount Sinai NYU Health, Queens Palliative Care Network, and Southern Brooklyn Palliative Care Network. Several projects will focus on low-income communities and will also target culturally diverse neighborhoods.

Washington, DC - Recognizing the important role nurses play in caring for dying patients, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has awarded more than $2 million to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) to support a comprehensive, national education program to improved training in end-of-life care. The project, scheduled to last for 3-1/2 years, aims to develop a core of expert nursing faculty in end-of-life care and to coordinate national nursing efforts around relevant issues. The AACN and the City of Hope Cancer Center will work together to develop the curriculum. Nursing faculty will attend one of five national conferences slated to begin in January 2001. AACN estimates that 500 faculty members, who have potential access to more than 100,000 nurses, will participate.

In Print - The Winter 2000 publication of the Foundation for Accountability (FACCT), which offers a detailed look at health web sites. Written by Keith McCandless, co-director of the Health Forum’s Leadership Center, the article features dozens of websites. For more information, visit FACCT at www.facct.org.

In November 1998, the Project On Death In America and the Center on Crime, Communities & Culture, co-sponsored a conference on death and dying behind bars. Presentations from that meeting have been written as articles and published in the Fall 1999 issue of The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics. For more information, visit the website at www.aslme.org or call 617.262.4990.

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This content is provided by Americans for Better Care of the Dying. For more information, visit www.abcd-caring.org.