National Hospice and Palliative Care Month: Divide and Conquer

by Christian Sinclair (@ctsinclair)Now thatNational Hospice and Palliative Care Month (NHPCM) is in the books for 2017, December is a good time to reflect on what these awareness months can (and cannot) accomplish and how we can make a better strategy for the future. Awareness campaigns have blazed brightly through the bracelet and ribbon eras, and are firmly in the social media era with no signs of stopping (other than possibly fatigue from so much awareness about awareness campaigns.)No single group is technically is in charge of National Hospice and Palliative Care Month. Very few calendar-based advocacy campaigns (CBACs) are trademarked, but there is usually one organization that champions them. Most CBACs get formalized with some sort of political proclamation, like theNational Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) (formerly National Hospice Organization (NHO)) did in1985 with President Ronald Reagan. and Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama (not sure if Trump did anything with it this year.) At some point National Hospice Month became NHPCM, probably around the same time NHO became NHPCO in the mid-2000 ' s when palliative care was a growing presence in the health care conversations. NHPCO continues to be the organization which puts the most time and effort into NHPCM as they maintainsocial media resources, graphics and outreach tools on their website, whereas most other national organizations in hospice and/or palliative care do not.In 2010, Renee Berry and I...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - Category: Palliative Care Tags: hospice palliative sinclair The profession Source Type: blogs