Posted on January 11, 2003

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Project on Dying in America Awards $1 Million for Palliative Care Fellowship Programs

The Project on Death in America (PDIA), a program of the New York City-based Open Society Institute, and the Emily Davie and Joseph S. Kornfeld Foundation have announced grants totaling more than $1 million to seven palliative care fellowship programs across the country. The grants will support the training of physicians in the principles and practice of palliative care.

The new initiative is designed to help build the capacity of palliative care fellowship programs and to establish palliative medicine as a recognized subspecialty of medicine. Palliative care works aggressively to relieve the pain and physical symptoms of patients with serious illnesses, while offering emotional support to the patient and his or her family.

"Palliative medicine as a field is well positioned to attain subspecialty status," said Dr. Kathleen Foley, director of PDIA, which works to understand and transform the culture and experience of dying and bereavement through initiatives in research, scholarship, and public policy. "Many of the necessary elements are in place, but based on the experiences of other medical specialties like emergency medicine or geriatrics, we believe that it will take time. Increased support for existing and new graduate fellowship programs is crucial. We encourage other foundations to join our newly formed Funders Consortium to Advance Palliative Medicine."

Through the initiative, PDIA and the Kornfeld Foundation have awarded two-year grants of $150,000 each to seven fellowship programs that demonstrate institutional commitment to palliative care training and emphasize the assessment and management of physical, psychological, and spiritual suffering faced by patients with life-limiting illnesses and their families, including communication, ethical and legal decision making, pain and symptom management, bereavement support for the family, and interdisciplinary team work.