Promoting Palliative Care to the Public: Guidance and Lessons Learned from 3 Years of Community Outreach Efforts

COURSE DESCRIPTION

Join members of Stanford Medicines’ Palliative Care Community Partnerships Team to gain insights and “lessons learned” from partnering with community organizations to develop, implement, and evaluate a multifaceted intervention to increase awareness about palliative care in the community.

Despite significant growth in palliative care (PC) services over the last decade, there has been little change in the public’s awareness of PC. As recently as 2019, nearly 70% of adults in the US have never heard of PC, and only about 10% of adults report knowing what PC is and feel that they could describe it to someone. 

Several studies have shown that lack of awareness and inadequate knowledge of PC is a significant barrier for patients to accept or ask for a referral to PC. Misconceptions about PC among the public also contribute to referring providers’ fears of negative reactions to recommending PC. Together, these patient and provider barriers result in missed opportunities to reduce suffering and improve quality of life for people living with serious illness. 

Over three years, using innovative approaches, the Stanford team was able to demonstrate that participation in their educational sessions results in a statistically significant improvement in PC knowledge and attitudes towards PC, including a willingness to accept a PC referral. 

The Stanford team is sharing this session to encourage and inspire other hospice and palliative care programs to consider pursuing efforts to promote palliative care awareness and understanding in their local communities. The team recognizes that the activation energy to get started in these efforts can feel and be high. To help lower this activation energy, they aim to use their experience to provide guidance for programs interested in community outreach by sharing their strategy, methods of connecting to community partners, educational materials, evaluation approach, and lessons learned. 

$49 for non-members. Want to become a CCCC member and attend for free? Complete information here.

PLEASE NOTE: Registration closes at 11:00 am PT on October 24,, 2023.

1 CE available for nurses and social workers. After you click the Register Myself button, be sure to scroll to the Program section below the Add button to click the appropriate program and enter your license number. Next, click the Proceed to Checkout button at the bottom of the page and then complete your registration by clicking the Submit Order in the cart. Live attendance and survey completion are required to earn 1.0 CE.

OBJECTIVES

Objective 1: Assess the impact of community-based education on transforming low awareness and inadequate knowledge about palliative care as key barriers to people living with serious illness accepting or asking for referrals to palliative care and relate them to strategies which have been 
 
Objective 2: Create a systematic approach for developing, implementing, and evaluating community-based outreach about palliative care through community partnerships. 

Objective 3: Rate various community-based organizations or programmatic/institutional resource that could help your program get started in community-based/public outreach about hospice and palliative care. 

FACULTY

Panelists: 

 Ashley Bragg serves as the director of the Stanford Palliative Care Center of Excellence (PCCOE). She has a decade of experience developing, implementing, and evaluating health care programs at the local, state, and national level. She began her career at UCSF, building innovative, data-driven programs in both adolescent sexual health and palliative care. At Stanford’s Clinical Excellence Research Center, she oversaw the formation, implementation, and evaluation of efforts to discover and translate high value care attributes into insights for providers caring for high-need patients. Currently, she directs the Stanford Palliative Care Community Partnerships Team, which aims to raise awareness and knowledge of palliative care for those living with serious illness and beyond. In this role, she develops strategic plans for strengthening community partnerships and expanding the reach of educational content, including interventions that target populations traditionally underserved by hospice and palliative care. She has presented nationally at the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) and contributed to presentations at prior CCCC Annual Summits as well as the California Hospice and Palliative Care Association (CHAPCA).

Grant Smith, MD currently serves as the Medical Director for the Stanford Palliative Care Center of Excellence (PCCOE) Community Partnerships Team. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in psychology from Duke University. He received his medical degree from Harvard Medical School. He completed his internal medicine residency and palliative care fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. As part of the Stanford faculty, he is an attending on the palliative care inpatient service and a provider in the outpatient palliative care clinic in Palo Alto. In his role in the Stanford Palliative Care Community Partnerships Team, he develops and strengthens relationships with community-based organizations serving individuals and families living with serious illness, and he delivers many of the team’s educational webinars and workshops. Dr. Smith also helps to lead the team’s evaluation efforts investigating the degree to which the team’s educational efforts affect participants’ knowledge and attitudes about palliative care. He has presented nationally at the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM), the California Hospice and Palliative Care Association (CHAPCA), and he has published in the Journal of Palliative Medicine and the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management.

Ann Cao-Nasalga, MBA serves as the Program Coordinator for the PCCOE Community Partnerships Team. She completed her undergraduate degree in Health Education at SF State University and received her master’s in business administration in Health Administration at Southern Oregon University. She worked for Contra Costa County in the Public Health Department as a Senior Health Education Specialist, where she developed, implemented, and evaluated education programs for the county’s school-based clinic program. At Stanford, Ann is a certified tobacco treatment specialist (TTS), where she engages patients in tobacco cessation programs. As part of the Stanford Palliative Care Community Partnerships Team, she manages the social media outreach efforts and coordinates the community-based educational sessions.

Olivia Tigre Nerimora, MHA, Project Coordinator, Palliative Care Center of Excellence, Stanford Health Care is a native of the Bay Area and has more than 9 years of experience working for Stanford University, where she started as a clinical research coordinator and later became a project manager for a health-focused multi-site study on women’s health. Her experience in research projects includes working on clinical trials, as well as working on research efforts focused on health equity.

Moderator:

Jennifer Moore Ballentine, MA, CEO, Coalition for Compassionate Care of California is an educator, consultant, and advocate with more than 20 years’ experience and expertise in palliative care and hospice, adult education, healthcare ethics and policy. She is the former Executive Director of the California State University Shiley Haynes Institute for Palliative Care and previously held numerous leadership roles. Ms. Ballentine serves on the Palliative Care Council for the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization; the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine Roundtable on Quality Care for People With Serious Illness; the Palliative Care Advisory Panel for the Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics, University of Southern California. She has delivered hundreds of in-services, Grand Rounds, professional trainings and state and national workshops as well as keynote and plenary presentations at professional and academic conferences in the field of palliative care.