Reaching Out to Address Racial Disparity in Hospice Use
The St. Francis Fund has announced it will award a grant to Angela Hospice of Livonia for a project designed to improve quality of life for African Americans in Metro Detroit who are coping with a terminal illness. Through this initiative, Angela Hospice is hoping to address some of the disparity in hospice use amongst African Americans – a trend seen nationwide – through a campaign of relationship building and education that will increase access to care. In its latest edition of “Facts and Figures on Hospice Care in America,” the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO) reported that just 8.2-percent of Medicare recipients who used hospice were African American, according to CMS data. NHPCO has cited long-held mistrust of the government and healthcare system as factors contributing to hospice’s underuse by the African American community, but hospice providers are hoping to counteract that trend. “As an organization founded by the Felician Sisters, Angela Hospice h