Get Ready for National Healthcare Decisions Day!

On April 16, join PREPARE and people across the country in recognizing National Healthcare Decisions Day (NHDD), hosted by our good colleagues at The Conversation Project.

PREPARE offers a range of tools to help you engage your community, including:

Easy-to-read advance directives for U.S. states in multiple languages
Pamphlets about our PREPARE for YOUR Care and PREPARE for THEIR Care programs
Simple scripts to start advance care planning conversations
Toolkits to organize group events for patients and caregivers
Validated advance care planning engagement surveys to assess the impact of your NHDD events.

Remember: advance care planning is for all adults at every life stage.

Check out @agewellwithdrsteph’s related posts on Instagram and TikTok.

If you are based in or visiting San Francisco on April 16, we invite you to join Rafael Mandelman (President of the Board of Supervisors), the Supportive Care Collaborative (formerly the San Francisco Palliative Care Work Group), and Dr. Rebecca Sudore (Founder and Director of PREPARE) for a 10 a.m. press conference and community event on the steps of San Francisco City Hall.

2026 Advance Directive Updates

Advance directive laws vary by state. Each year, we conduct a review to ensure our forms remain legally valid. This rigorous process involves legal review, translating text into easy-to-read language, translating and culturally adapting it into several languages, and integrating the forms into our website. The map shows all the states in which language was updated.

Help Us Expand PREAPRE's Reach

We are interested in expanding PREPARE’s reach in Mississippi, Louisiana, New York, Tennessee, and Ohio. If you have colleagues or community connections in these areas, please share PREPAREforYourCare.org and our e asy-to-read advance directives with them.

Thank You to the McElhattan Foundation!

We are grateful to the McElhattan Foundation for a generous award to support our annual legal review and revisions of our advance directives. The award also allows us to engage with Pittsburgh-area community-based organizations to increase awareness about advance care planning and PREPARE tools. We are thrilled about our partnership and the opportunity to help more people have a voice in their health care.

Learning and Leadership: From San Francisco to Prague

Dr. Sudore continues to share PREPARE locally, nationally, and internationally.

She recently attended the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine’s Annual Assembly in San Diego, joining thousands of colleagues to exchange insights and advance the field.
On March 24, she will present “Choices That Shape Your Care” at the San Francisco Campus for Jewish Living. This free event requires pre-registration. The session will be recorded and made available on YouTube.
Looking ahead, Dr. Sudore will present at the European Association for Palliative Care’s 20 ^th World Congress in Prague, taking place May 14-16.

Explore Recent Studies with Our Collaborators

Jessica E. Ma & David Casarett, et al. | Core Elements of Goals of Care Initiatives Across Eight Health Systems
Gina Piscitello & Jane Schell, et al. | Differences in Goals of Care and Advance Care Planning Note Templates
Cristal Brown & Rebecca L. Sudore, et al. | Barriers and Strategies to Effective Serious Illness Communication for Patients with End-Stage Liver Disease in the Intensive Care Setting

We share advance care planning news and ideas on LinkedIn, Bluesky, and Facebook. Join the conversation and help spread the word!