About the Center to Advance Palliative Care
CAPC's Mission
The Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) is a national organization dedicated to improving quality of life, advancing health equity, and strengthening care delivery for people living with serious illness, and their caregivers. We provide health care professionals and organizations with the tools, training, and insights necessary to make health care work better for everyone.
CAPC is funded through organizational membership and the generous support of foundations and private philanthropy. It is part of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, in New York City.
Our Commitment to Inclusivity
As a leading organization in its field, CAPC is deeply committed to fostering an environment that reflects and celebrates the many perspectives, identities, and experiences of our professional community and the patient communities we serve. CAPC's content emphasizes that equity is central to quality care, and that palliative care leaders are called to address barriers faced by underrepresented and underserved populations.
We aim to offer resources that equip all health care professionals with the tools and knowledge necessary to deliver high-quality, equitable, and compassionate care to all individuals. (See Project Equity to learn more.) We are also deeply committed to recruiting and supporting a diverse team that represents a constellation of perspectives and experiences.
Our Organizational Values
Patient Focus: We prioritize the well-being of patients and caregivers in everything we do.
Equity: We champion equity and inclusivity in our work with health professionals, and on our team.
Excellence: We are committed to evidence-based best practices, informed by the perspectives of our audiences and the communities they serve.
Collaboration: We achieve impact by collaborating with people and organizations across the health care field.
Innovation: We think creatively to solve complex problems and drive positive change for patients, caregivers, and health professionals.
Advocacy: We make the case for highest-quality care for all people living with serious illness, at the federal, state, and organizational level.
Empathy: We emphasize compassion and respect, recognizing the impact our actions have on our colleagues, our field, and our communities. We seek to understand their challenges and needs before taking action.
Passion: We share a deep commitment and sense of purpose that drives our work.
CAPC History
Established in late 1999 as a National Program Office of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), the Center to Advance Palliative Care was created in order to improve the care of people living with serious illness, and their families. For two decades, CAPC has led the nation's growth in sustainable, high-quality palliative care programs and the standardization of best practice, the process of which aims to rapidly facilitate the translation of a growing body of evidence to implementation in the real world of clinical practice. Today, CAPC also extends its reach beyond palliative care, so that all clinicians treating serious illness have basic palliative care knowledge and skill.
Since 2006, CAPC has been supported by a consortium of foundations and private philanthropy. In 2015, CAPC became a membership organization in order to achieve the scale needed to support the expansion of palliative care, as well as its principles and core practices, across the full spectrum of health care delivery.
About CAPC Membership
CAPC provides its member organizations—health systems, hospitals, hospices, home health agencies, long-term care facilities, medical groups, health plans, and other entities—with the tools, training, and technical assistance needed to improve care quality for people living with serious illness and their family caregivers.
All staff at member organizations have access to everything CAPC has to offer, including toolkits, courses with free continuing education credits and MOC credits, webinars, Virtual Office Hours, and more. CAPC Designation status, a marker of completion of comprehensive training, in communication skills, pain management, symptom management, and best practices in dementia care is available to all clinicians.
CAPC membership helps organizations start, grow, or expand access to palliative care skills and practices. It provides the knowledge and training needed by all clinicians to improve the care of people living with serious illness.
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