Hospice Foundation of America

We support organizations and efforts which assist terminally ill patients and their families through the dying process in a less painful and more caring manner.

Why do we exist?

Hospice Foundation of America provides leadership in the development and application of hospice with the goal of improving the American health care system and the role of hospice within it.

Towards that end, we provide resources and professional support to hospices to help them in their mission of serving the terminally ill.  Hospices are community based and are involved with daily care of the patient. We design and develop programs to help those hospices do their work, programs that are intended to raise the quality of hospice care and to improve access to hospice.  We leverage many small donations in the development of these programs, and make them available either for free, or at or near our cost. Our on-line learning programs are used by all hospice clinicians to maintain their competency. We also offer educational programs to the general public which includes free publications and web-based resources.

What have you accomplished?

The largest program we run is the annual national satellite teleconference, Living With Grief.  Each year since 1994 we have gathered over 100,000 professionals from every state to hear a panel of nationally noted clinicians discuss a topic of importance to dying persons and their families. The teleconference is offered for free and telecast with a live audience from Washington, DC. 

Over the years we’ve covered such a wide range of topics – pain control, care for dying children, ethical dilemmas of the dying, care giving issues, grief of all sorts and the challenges in caring for various minorities.  In one recent year one of our participants told the touching story of the early death of her daughter. Her husband, a Muslim, was stoic over the loss, as befitted his background; she, an African American, was more Americanized and was grieving accordingly. The problem was her son, who was caught between conflicting ethnic, religious and racial concepts of grieving. He was becoming withdrawn, and she was very worried about him.  The woman was able to get some very practical suggestions from a panel of grief professionals.

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