Partners Palliative Care

The Collaborative for Palliative Care ("Collaborative") is a grassroots consortium of public and private organizations that came together in 2005 for the purposes of studying the increasing need for palliative care and the methods for such care. It has grown from a small fledgling group to a membership of over 50 community-based organizations and volunteers dedicated to improving care of the seriously ill through education, research and advocacy. The Collaborative bridges policy, research and practice in its initiatives and vision for the future.

Partners in Palliative Care examines specific areas of concern that the Collaborative has addressed in its education programs and advocacy, as well as the collaborative processes that have been so successful in building community assets. Areas of concentration have been diverse and include advance care planning, relational communication paradigms, community capacity building, the role of culture and spirituality in palliative care, the meaning of pain and suffering for seriously ill individuals, and the ethics of health care costs in palliative and end-of-life systems of care.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Social Work in End-of-Life and Palliative Care.

Mary Beth Morrissey is a social science researcher with the Fordham Graduate School of Social Service, USA. She earned her Ph.D. in May 2011 at the Fordham University Graduate School of Social Service in gerontological social work and was a recipient of the Fordham University May 2011 Langenfeld Research Award for doctoral research. She is also a practising health care attorney with over 20 years of experience serving health care providers in various health care settings. Her research has focused on health and mental health policy, public health law, pain and suffering among seriously ill older adults, and relational paradigms of communication in palliative systems of care. She provides education to interdisciplinary professionals on translating legal and ethical norms into clinical practice.

Bruce Jennings is a director of bioethics at the Center for Humans and Nature, a Lecturer at the Yale School of Public Health and a Senior Consultant at The Hastings Center, both in the USA. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of the forthcoming 4th edition of the Encyclopedia of Bioethics. He writes on ethics, political theory, and public policy issues – mainly in the areas of health and the environment.