Health Progress is especially proud of this issue's special section on palliative care. Our guest editor is Laurence J. O'Connell, PhD, STD, president and CEO of the Park Ridge Foundation for the Study of Health, Faith and Ethics, and chief ethics officer, Advocate Health Care, both of which are based in Chicago. A longtime CHA friend, Dr. O'Connell is a past member of this journal's Editorial Advisory Committee.
In putting our special section together, Dr. O'Connell has had help from Ira Byock, MD, a distinguished figure in the development of end-of-life care in the United States. A cofounder of the Life's End Institute: Missoula Demonstration Project, Missoula, MT, Dr. Byock is currently director of palliative medicine, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH. He is also program director of Promoting Excellence in End-of-Life Care, a national program sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In "The Ethics of Loving Care," he discusses the importance of palliative care.
Readers will find Promoting Excellence described in "Aligning Values with Practice" by Dr. Byock and Jeanne S. Twohig, the program's deputy director. Dr. Byock is also a coauthor, with Kaye Norris, PhD; Gretchen Strohmaier, MDiv; and Charles Asp, PhD, of "Spiritual Care at the End of Life."
Christina Puchalski, MD, another leader in palliative care, is the author of "Listening to Stories of Joy and Pain." In "Giving Patients a 'Good Death,'" Nancy Mulvihill, vice president, corporate communications, Covenant Health Systems, Lexington, MA, describes end-of-life care at St. Joseph's Hospital, Nashua, NH.