Comfort Care Coalition History

    Some of our past accomplishments: hosting a 2004 community forum, Matters of Life and Death: Advancing Excellence in End-of-Life Care, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; hosting a follow-up forum, Advancing Excellence in End-of-Life Care: Next Steps, with Tennessee Commissioner of Health, Kenneth Robinson, M.D., as the principal speaker; and partnering with the National Civil Rights Museum and Rhodes College to plan the 2006 Conference on Freedom, Patient Rights and Responsibility. The Coalition has a Speakers Bureau that makes presentations locally on topics related to advance care planning and end-of-life care.

    During 2005, the MCCC was funded by the H.W. Durham Foundation to present educational programs to local faith communities, senior groups, retirement facilities, assisted living facilities, and to the staff, resident councils, and family councils of nursing homes. Durham Foundation funding was also awarded to the MCCC in 2010 for a pilot project to establish vigiling programs in local nursing homes. As a function of our partnership with MCBE, the MCCC sent two representatives to meetings of the MCBE’s Memphis Area Institutional Advance Care Planning Task Force, which met over a period of two years and was composed of representatives from Methodist-LeBonheur Healthcare, Baptist Memorial Healthcare, St. Francis Hospital, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the VA Medical Center, and the MCCC. We partnered with the MCBE to present the 2006 Cashdollar Lecture, entitled Quality End-of-Life Care for Older Adults: Continuing Life’s Journey.

    In March, 2008, the MCCC sponsored a free event entitled Creative Passage, Honoring Life, Encouraging Hope to raise community awareness of the healing power of the arts at the end of life. We subsequently presented several continuing education classes on advance care planning through the University of Memphis. The MCCC also partnered with the Greater Memphis Area Chapter of the Association of Critical Care Nurses and with the Tennessee End-of-Life Partnership to present classes on end-of-life issues for health care providers. In 2010, we collaborated with the Sanofi-Aventis Community Health Partnership to present a conference, Living, Loving, and Dying Well, at the University of Memphis.