Professionals play a key role in initiating and facilitating discussions about healthcare decisions and end-of-life wishes. The information you provide and the support you offer are crucial to help individuals understand their options, share what matters most and complete important documents to ensure others know their preferences.
Essential Conversations is an initiative of Compassion & Choices, created in partnership with the American Society on Aging in 2023, to normalize end-of-life conversations and expand dementia-specific advance care planning nationwide.
Compassion & Choices is honored to collaborate and support the work of these organizations and the difference they make in the lives of their clients and community:
Coming soon in 2025, the Dementia Deck! A collaborative project of The Death Deck and Compassion & Choices to include dementia in end-of-life care and planning conversations
Care Prepared is dedicated to empowering individuals throughout the state of Maryland to take charge of their future healthcare decisions by providing accessible education and care planning resources. Through Essential Conversations in 2025, Care Prepared now offers the first state-specific Dementia Values & Priorities Tool, customized just for Marylanders.
Lifespan of Greater Rochester is a nonprofit organization serving Monroe and surrounding Finger Lakes counties in New York, providing information, guidance, and services for older adults and caregivers, as well as training and education for professionals and the community. During their six month project in 2024, the Lifespan team hosted numerous community activities and partnered with 3 local organizations to provide information and care planning resources to over 200 people. The team of care managers embraced the dementia tool, using it in almost 250 in-person care consultations.
The Dementia Care Specialist Program at the Milwaukee County Aging and Disabilities Resource Center provides supportive services for people with dementia and their caregivers. With Essential Conversations, the dementia care specialists created a new initiative to include information and resources on planning for future care. Their efforts during the six month project in 2024 reached hundreds through community presentations, individual care consultations, outreach events and collaborations with local dementia diagnostic clinics.
The Legal Services Developer Program offered by the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services offers pro-bono legal services to underrepresented and underserved communities. Through their six-month Essential Conversations project in 2024, the program hosted a legal clinic and assisted 49 adults in completing the dementia tool along with other documents. More clinics are planned. The program also provided training to Area Agency on Aging staff across the state.
The Mississippi Dementia Advance Planning Project provides outreach and education to people living with dementia or who anticipate the need for dementia-specific planning. In collaboration with North MS Rural Legal Services, this collaborative group provided end-of-life planning education and resources to more than 800 community members and professionals throughout the state during their six-month project in 2024.
Avocare Health provides home health and care management in and around Detroit, MI to help adults thrive in their community. Their six-month project in 2024 expanded advance care planning services to help patients clarify goals of care and plan for the future. Clinicians and physicians embraced the tool for patients and professional trainings.
These resources are designed to help you create or expand programs to encourage end of life planning with your clients and community.
The Essential Conversations Guide highlights the importance of advance care planning prior to a dementia diagnosis, showcases the origins of the Essential Conversations project and provides tangible steps for professionals to incorporate a dementia directive in their work with clients.
The Dementia Values and Priorities Tool, a unique dementia directive to communicate preferences for care and treatment if/when living with dementia. Available in English, Spanish, Traditional and Simple Chinese.
The End-of-Life Decisions Guide, a toolkit to help navigate end-of-life conversations and decisions. Available in English and Spanish.
The LGBTQ+ Advance Care Planning Toolkit, developed in partnership with SAGE, is a guide to prepare for healthcare needs and end-of-life decisions
The Death Deck is a tool designed to spark important and entertaining discussions about death and end-of-life care and options.
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