Certain groups suffer disproportionately in the face of serious illness, whether because of race, geography, income, sexual orientation, gender identity, culture, trauma history, or any of the myriad factors that impact patient care and patient experience.

Health professionals have a unique opportunity to lead in achieving health equity by establishing trust and alleviating suffering for traditionally oppressed or excluded patients. This toolkit provides curated tools and resources to improve the quality of care provided to these patient groups, and move the needle on equity for all people living with serious illness. We also recommend reviewing CAPC’s health equity blog series for additional information and resources.

What’s in the Toolkit

These CAPC videos provide information on various health equity issues that exist for people with serious illness, and strategies for palliative care professionals to provide more equitable care.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) Principles for Palliative Care Leaders
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Foundational guidance for leaders to integrate diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging principles into health care organizations.

BRIEFING: Key Findings and Opportunities from CAPC’s National Scan on Improving Care for Black Patients

In this on-demand national briefing, speakers discuss key findings from CAPC’s national scan on improving care for black patients living with serious illness, and interventions that address disparities.

Achieving Health Equity and Reducing Implicit Bias in Palliative Care

This Virtual Office Hours, Achieving Health Equity and Reducing Implicit Bias in Palliative Care, covers health disparities that exist in the care of people living with serious illness.

CAPC 2x4 2020 Keynote: Fixing What’s Broken: How Palliative Care Can Help Achieve Health Equity

Strategies palliative care teams can employ to ensure racial and ethnic communities have access to care that relieves suffering.

Health Equity Policy Recommendations

Compilation of policy recommendations to improve the care of Black patients living with serious illness and their families.

The Leader’s Role: Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Opportunities in Palliative Care Programs

In this on-demand webinar, panelists provide practical ways palliative care leaders can advance DEI practices in hiring and retention, team culture and composition, and clinical care delivery.

Embracing Cultural Humility in Palliative Care

In this on-demand webinar, the presenter demonstrates how health professionals can examine biases through the lens of two clinical palliative care cases.

The Leader’s Role: Forging New Paths for Racial and Health Equity

In this on-demand webinar, panelists discuss ways to identify how structural racism is operating at your institution, and actions both programs and individuals can take to promote health equity.

The Role of Spiritual Care: Connecting with Patients, Families, and Colleagues

This on-demand webinar discusses the importance of addressing the spiritual care needs and existential pain of patients and caregivers, and our colleagues.

How to Provide Effective Safety-Net Palliative Care

This on-demand webinar highlights CareOregon’s experience in providing outpatient palliative care to Portland's most complex patients, and ways to address medical, behavioral health, housing, and social support needs.

Managing Implicit Bias and Its Effect on Health Care Disparities

This Master Clinician describes the unintended consequences of implicit bias on health care disparities and shares a practical framework for how teams can begin to address these issues to enhance patient care.

Presentations and resources from CAPC's Health Equity Workshop Series.

Presentation on the Penn Medicine Palliative Care Training on "Upstander" Allyship
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This slide deck, presented by Dr. Niharika Ganta, provides an overview of the "Upstander" Allyship training provided to palliative care clinicians at Penn Medicine.

Presentation on Improving Access to Care for Black Patients with Serious Illness at Hospice of the Chesapeake
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This slide deck, presented by Dr. Rachel Sherman, provides an overview of the work being done by Hospice of the Chesapeake to address health disparties for Black patients with serious illness.

Presentation on the UCSF Palliative Care Team's Data Collection Project to Address Inequity

This slide deck provides an overview of the UCSF Palliative Care team's data collection project aimed at increasing palliative care clinic visits by Black and Latino patients.

Data Collection to Increase Palliative Care Clinic Visits by Black and Latino Patients in California

How the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) palliative care team is using data to increase clinic visits by Black and Latino Patients.

Inclusivity Interview Script Adapted from UCSF

The following script was created by the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) and is shared by the Center to Advance Palliative Care (CAPC) for educational purposes only. This serves as a guide for those looking to implement inclusive interviews.

Presentation Slides on Hackensack Meridian Palliative Care Intervention for Patients with Sickle Cell Anemia

This slide deck provides an overview of the Hackensack University Medical Center's palliative care intervention for patients with Sickle Cell Anemia.

Treating Patients with Sickle Cell Disease in New Jersey: How Palliative Care Can Help

How the palliative care team at Hackensack University Medical Center created a process so every patient with a sickle cell anemia crisis or related acute admission is seen by the palliative care service.

Presentation Slides on Project Cornerstone (UAB Model)

This slide deck provides an overview of the UAB team's work on Project Cornerstone, an equity intervention led by specially trained lay navigators.

Project Cornerstone: An Upstream Palliative Care Intervention for Rural and African-American Advanced Cancer Family Caregivers

The University of Alabama at Birmingham's Project Cornerstone addresses the gap in resources specifically designed for Black family members/caregivers of patients living with cancer.

Presentation on the AC Care Alliance Advanced Illness Care Program

This slide deck provides an overview of the AC Care Alliance Advanced Illness Care Program (ACIP), a care navigator led model developed to address the unique needs of this population, addressing serious illness care disparities in communities of color and advancing equity.

Advanced Illness Care Program Utilizing a ‘Five Cornerstone’ Approach in California

The AC Care Alliance created the Advanced Illness Care Program (AICP), which uses a Five Cornerstone approach to address the unique needs of Black people will serious illness.

With wide variation in the care experience of diverse patients, and their families, these resources offer ideas for increasing accessibility and inclusiveness for historically excluded patient populations.

Assessment of Palliative Care Climate Before and After Antiracism Education

CAPC 2x4 poster on assessing baseline attitudes about diversity, health equity, and inclusion on an interdisciplinary palliative care team.

Rural Telehealth Palliative Care Case Study: The ENABLE Program
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Slide deck providing information on how telehealth, if developed with intention, can improve access and equity especially in rural, underserved populations.

NHPCO Diversity Tools and Resources

NHPCO’s compilation of tools and resource guides to increase access to hospice and palliative care services within diverse communities.

Providing Inclusive and Affirmative Palliative Care for the LGBTQ+ Community

In this on-demand Master Clinician session, members of a palliative care team from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai will provide an overview of the multidimensional approach to inclusive and affirmative palliative care for the LGBTQ+ community.

Tools to incorporate the intersectionality and unique care experiences of certain populations living with serious illness to improve their care quality.

Inclusive Clinical Encounters

The goal of this learning activity is to equip clinicians across all disciplines with the tools to foster effective and inviting clinical encounters with seriously ill patients.

Practicing Inclusive Clinical Encounters

This learning activity, Practicing Inclusive Clinical Encounters, will help clinicians integrate strategies for effective and inclusive clinical encounters into their daily practice.

Implementing a Screening Question on Racism in Healthcare During Palliative Care Consults

CAPC 2x4 poster using a quality improvement project to assess the feasibility of implementing a screening question on racism into a palliative care consult note.

Exploring the Perspectives of Oncology Hispanic Population at End-of-Life in an Inpatient Hospital Setting

CAPC 2x4 poster using case review of Hispanic oncology patients in an inpatient setting and ways to overcome barriers via an interpreter.

GeriPal Podcast: LGBT Care for Older Adults and Serious Illness

In this GeriPal podcast episode, Drs. Carey Candrian and Angela Primbas describe the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender older adults and how the care recieved later in life can either empower or continue to stigmatize these communities.

This self-directed learning activity provides community and acute care palliative care programs with a foundation of knowledge in social determinants of health and health equity within palliative care. It guides the participant through a process to a) Understand the various definitions of social determinants of health, b) Review the current state of health equity within palliative care, c) Analyze the demographics within their program’s geography, d) Identify resources within their community, and e) Create a strategic plan to deliver more inclusive and culturally responsive palliative care.

Health Equity Concepts: Community Assessment for Palliative Care Programs – Self-Directed Learning Activity Guide

This guide provides foundational concepts, and uses community mapping and asset mapping processes to foster more inclusive palliative care.

Health Equity Concepts: Community Assessment for Palliative Care Programs - References and Resources

A comprehensive list of the literature cited within the learning activity guide, which supports the concepts, processes, and principles of health equity and social determinants of health within palliative care.

Complete the Evaluation for the Health Equity Concepts: Community Assessment for Palliative Care Learning Activity

After completing the Community Assessment Learning Activity, please complete this short evaluation. Your feedback is important to us.

Recommended clinical tools to standardize the way in which symptoms are captured for underserved patient populations, and considerations to incorporate cultural humility into communication and care plans for patients with serious illness.

Pain Assessment Questions
MEMBERS ONLY locked

Recommended assessment questions to typify pain and inform pain management for patients with serious illness.

Kagawa-Singer & Blackhall’s ABCD Cultural Assessment Model

Cultural assessment document with a mnemonic approach to improve communication with patients and families.

Cultural Humility in Caring for People with Serious Illness

Defines cultural humility and how it influences patient care and offers ways to provide culturally humble care.

Communication Skills for Bridging Inequality During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Sample script to help clinicians better understand patients’ experiences and meet needs, both during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Unconscious Bias: What It Is, How It Influences Health Care, and What You Can Do About It

Defines unconscious bias and how it influences patient care, and provides ways to reduce the impact of unconscious bias on care delivery.

Key Ingredients for Making Trauma-Informed Care a Standard of Care

Developed by the Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS), this two-page fact sheet describes a trauma-informed approach to care to provide effective health care services.

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