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Dear National Healthcare Decisions Day Team:
We're getting close, again! Less than two short months to National Healthcare Decisions Day 2020! Are you ready? Will you look back with 20/20 hindsight and be completely satisfied with what you've done?! I certainly hope so. If you don't have that confidence, there is still time to make your event/initiative/activities great. Go team!
Personal Recommendation/Challenge:
If you ever have the opportunity to spend some time with someone who is dying, DO NOT PASS IT UP. I recently said goodbye to a dear friend who died from ALS. For the last several months, I sat with her on a weekly basis for our "Working Group" on how to live and die gracefully. Aside from being personally profound, the time I spent with my friend served as vivid proof that what we're doing with NHDD really, really matters. To be sure, dying and watching someone die isn't easy, but in the case of my friend, the time that she had ALS was the richest part of her entire life.
Ready-made resources to use:
- Get the word out by using or adapting any of these materials in our ready-made NHDD toolkit.
- Check out our newly updated website, which has a plethora of additional resources to make it easy to participate in NHDD, including communications materials, events and presentation materials, promotional and media outreach materials and more!
- We'd love to hear your feedback on thew new layout. Email us at nhdd@ihi.org.
- Use The Conversation Starter Kits, videos and more!
- Use The Good Talk Toolkit, a resource that can supplement your organization's capacity to build awareness and understanding for advance care planning, developed by and based on the Massachusetts Coalition for Serious Illness Care's public messaging research.
Learn from others:
- Join our upcoming Community call on planning for NHDD with special guests Nathan Kottkamp, founder of NHDD, and Anna Gosline of the Massachusetts Coalition for Serious Illness Care on Wednesday, February 19th from 3:00-4:30 PM EST. Click here for more details and to register.
- Share the following blogs that will give individuals and groups ideas on how to participate in NHDD:
- Join the discussion, share your plans and gather ideas on our newly created Facebook discussion group: The Conversation Project Community Champions.
- Participate in our upcoming Twitter chat (@convoproject) on Thursday, March 26th from 3:30-4:30 EST. Click here for more details.
- Ask us if you need a guest speaker for an upcoming call, webinar, or virtual event you'd like to host to get people excited for NHDD (nhdd@ihi.org).
Expanding Our Scope:
As I have mentioned previously, I challenge the entire NHDD team to expand the scope of activities from the traditional focus on end-of-life issues to include mental health issues and any other non-end-of-life issues that are important to people. This expansion is not something new with respect to advance care planning; it just hasn't been emphasized as much. I sincerely hope that the NHDD initiative can help advance the state of affairs with respect to ALL forms of advance care planning.
Keep up the great work, and thanks for all you do!
Cheers,
Nathan
National Healthcare Decisions Day Initiative
your decisions matter
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