State Palliative Care Champions Reflect on Awareness Laws
Hospice News recently spoke with several experts from across the country, including CAPC’s Stacie Sinclair, about state laws designed to increase awareness of palliative care.
While these laws are passed with good intentions and can create a foundation for state level work, few have implementation funding attached. Other barriers include: the fact that many state health departments charged with supporting this work are similarly understaffed and underfunded; competing priorities, including COVID which set many programs back; and continued conflation of palliative care with other care in messaging. Even so, some Councils and other campaigns have advanced thanks to the work of talented and dedicated champions. Moving forward, states considering similar initiatives should ensure that laws include money for implementation and consider how they will measure impact.