Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Community State Partnership to
Improve End-of-Life Care

"We have educated, trained and policed the health care system and it has gone awry. Sometimes, doctors are too motivated to move on to the next patient and don't seem to recognize that communication is as important to know as how to operate. And if they can't communicate well, then they should get an advocate for the patient and their family..." -Caregiver

A grant program funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has awarded $11.25 million to 23 broad-based, multidisciplinary coalitions working to promote policy change and support for high-quality, comprehensive end-of-life care. The Community-State Partnerships to Improve End-of-Life Care is based on the belief that the actions and decisions of individual patients, families and professionals surroundings issues of end-of-life care can be greatly enhanced if they take place in a supportive policy context.

The grants support statewide coalitions working with citizens, health care professionals, educators and policymakers to identify problems, make recommendations and build public support for practical policies, regulations and guidelines to improve care of the dying. Examples of the diverse areas in which states are developing policies include:

Establishing high-level task forces or commissions that address problems of terminally ill citizens.
Improving the provision of palliative care, particularly pain control.
Encouraging medical, nursing and pharmacy schools to include state-of-the-art pain control and palliative care
in their curricula.
Encouraging insurance reimbursement for hospice and comprehensive palliative care.
Establishing quality standards for care in nursing homes and other institutions that care for frail and terminally ill patients.
Fostering cooperation and coordination among care providers, including emergency service workers and rescue squads.
Encouraging a public dialogue about how to solve problems in end-of-life care.

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