Focus Areas

Guidelines

Note: The following funding program is no longer active. For information about support for palliative care fellowship programs, contact the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine.

The Project on Death in America (PDIA), in collaboration with the Emily Davie and Joseph S. Kornfeld Foundation, created this funding initiative to support palliative care fellowship training programs. The goals of this jointly funded fellowship program are to support the training of physicians in the principles and practice of palliative care, to help build capacity of fellowship programs, and to help establish palliative medicine as a recognized subspecialty of medicine.

The field of palliative care is at an important juncture. We believe that supporting graduate fellowship programs will help this field grow and achieve widespread recognition as an essential component of both medical education and clinical practice. Our ultimate goal is for palliative care to become an accredited subspecialty of medicine.

PDIA and the Kornfeld Foundation awarded two-year grants of $150,000 each to thirteen fellowship programs that demonstrate institutional commitment to palliative care training. The programs teach the major areas of knowledge and skills covered by palliative medicine training: 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. The selected programs are:

• The Palliative Care Program at Marshfield Clinic, Marshfield, WI
• The Hospice/Palliative Training Program at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, Albuquerque, NM
• Combined Fellowship in Pediatric and Adult Palliative Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin Affiliated Hospitals, Milwaukee, WI
• The Pain and Palliative Care Service in the Department of Neurology of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York, NY
• Center for Palliative Studies at San Diego Hospice, San Diego, CA
• Palliative Care Fellowship Program, Section of Palliative Care and Medical Ethics, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA
• Palliative Care Fellowship Program, Montefiore Medical Center, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY
• Fellowship in Palliative Medicine, Duke University Medical Center, Durham, NC
• The Harry R. Horvitz Center for Palliative Medicine, Cleveland Clinic Taussig Cancer Center, Cleveland, OH
• The Palliative Care Fellowship Program, George Washington University, Washington, DC
• Pediatric Advanced Care Team, Children’s Hospital Boston, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA
• The Palliative Care and Home Hospice Program (received two awards), Northwestern University Feinberg Medical School, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Chicago, IL