Focus AreasAimed at understanding and transforming the culture and experience of dying in America, the PDIA Grants Program funded organizations ranging from the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C., to the Ellen Stephen Hospice in Pine Ridge, South Dakota. In the four cycles of the PDIA Grants Program, PDIA received over fifteen hundred Letters of Intent from all 50 states and Canada.
Grants were awarded to two museum exhibits; a national teleconference on sudden and traumatic death; a comprehensive training and support program for health care professionals, "The Project on Being With Dying"; school-based bereavement services with the "Children's Bereavement Project"; a study examining the nature and course of traumatic bereavement in children who lost a family member in the bombing in Oklahoma City; a book, Theatre as Rehearsal for Death; a hospice for the deaf; as well as studies aimed at investigating the quality of care received by the dying poor in a public hospital system and improving end-of-life care for nursing home residents.
The populations addressed by funded projects include dying individuals with AIDS, Alzheimer's, and cancer. Other initiatives sought to improve the care of the dying in hospitals, hospices, managed care organizations, and prisons.
Funding Areas
- The epidemiology, ethnography, and history of dying and bereavement in the United States
- The physicial, emotional, spiritual and existential components in dying and bereavement
- The contribution of arts and humanities
- The design, implementation, evaluation and dissemination of new service-delivery models for the dying and their network of family and friends
- The design, implementation, evaluation and dissemination of education programs for the public about death and dying
- The design, implementation, evaluation and dissemination of education programs for health care professionals
- The shaping of governmental and institutional policy
For a complete list of 1994–1997 grant recipients, see the Grantees section.
