About Compassion & Choices

Click here to learn about our Board and our Staff

 

• Too many suffer needlessly.
• Too many endure unrelenting pain.
• Too many turn to violent means at the end of life.

Compassion & Choices, a nonprofit organization, improves care and expands choice at the end of life. We support, educate and advocate.

Support

Compassion & Choices’ Consultation program uses the power of choice and comfort to restore hope to individuals and their loved ones at the end of life. Our professional staff and trained volunteers help thousands of clients each year by listening without judgment to their fears and guiding their search for a peaceful, humane death. We help clients with advance directives, local service referrals, and pain and symptom management. We offer information on self-determined dying when appropriate and provide emotional support through a difficult time.

Educate

Compassion & Choices promotes informed end-of-life decision making by educating the public and advising health care professionals. Too many health care professionals turn away from their dying patients. Too many Americans are unprepared to navigate the complex options and restrictions surrounding the end of life. We employ educational training programs, media outreach and online and print publications to change healthcare practice, inform policy-makers, influence public opinion and empower individuals.

Advocate

Compassion & Choices devotes itself to creative legal and legislative initiatives to secure comprehensive and compassionate options at the end of life. We set national standards for end-of-life care and assert constitutional protection for aid in dying. Our team of litigators and legislative experts fights bills that would force patients to endure futile, invasive treatment; sets enforceability standards for advance directives; mandates pain and palliative care training for physicians; monitors legislative and policy initiatives; and ultimately shapes best-practice standards for end-of-life care.

 

Click here to read the 2011 Compassion & Choices Annual Report (PDF) >>

Compassion & Choices creates an atmosphere free from judgment where everyone can talk about, and come to terms with, the difficult issues surrounding death and dying. Unlike most end-of-life organizations, we are not a religious organization; nor do we promote one ethical or belief system. We honor all people as individuals, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, age, disability, race, or any other category.  Call 1-800-247-7421 to find out more about planning for the future.

THE AID-IN-DYING MOVEMENT

The chronology of the choice-in-dying movement in the United States can be traced back as far as the early 1900s. The movement made major strides throughout the 1990s, which ultimately led to significant changes at the bedside, in the courtroom, and in state and federal government. A diverse group of people, some acting together, and many working individually, wrote books, gave speeches, advocated for new laws, and assisted friends and family members in finding their way through wrenching end-of-life decisions.

View a complete timeline.>>