A Learning Exchange: Community-Engaged Education about Palliative Care and Advance Care Planning

Key Message: Community-engaged education is essential to improving access to specialty palliative care (PC) and advance care planning (ACP) among minoritized populations. Sustaining this work depends on trusted community partners, bidirectional learning, dedicated funding, committed internal champions, meaningful involvement across the interprofessional team, and relevant program evaluation.

Abstract: Relevance &

Background:
Disparities in awareness, knowledge, and attitudes about both specialty palliative care (PC) and advance care planning (ACP) disproportionately affect LGBTQ+, Latinx, Black, and Asian populations and contribute to missed opportunities for individuals living with serious illness to access specialty PC and engage in ACP.(1,2) Collaborating with community-based organizations (CBOs) to provide culturally responsive, community -facing education about specialty PC and ACP is one way to address systemic inequities.(3) Yet, starting and sustaining community-engaged efforts for PC teams, especially outside of research contexts, can be challenging.(4) Common challenges include limited time, insufficient funding, and CBOs’ interest and time.(5)

Contributions To Expertise:
An interprofessional team (physicians, chaplain, social worker, researcher, and CBO executive director) representing four PC teams and a community-based work group will discuss practical strategies for overcoming implementation challenges in their community-engaged education efforts. We conducted a comparative analysis of strategies and framed our findings using the following key themes and relevant questions addressed across programs:
-Committed Community Partners: How do PC teams initiate and maintain strong relationships with community partners and ensure bidirectional learning?
-Financial Support: What are realistic funding models for sustaining these efforts?
-Internal Champions: How can clinicians become effective advocates within their institutions?
-Team Involvement: How to sustainably involve the interprofessional team?
-Evaluation: How can outcome measures meet the needs of diverse stakeholders?

Impact on Field of HPM:
Evaluating the impact of community-engaged education is important for funders, CBOs, and institutional leaders. Presenters will describe the evaluation methods and available results for their programs. Outcomes have included improvements in community participants’ PC knowledge, PC attitudes, and ACP engagement, improvements in PC teams’ comfort with community-facing education, and increased participation among minoritized populations. Additional benefits include enhanced interprofessional collaboration, new scholarship opportunities, strengthened community trust, and greater accessibility to PC.

References: 1. Masoud B, Imane B, Naiire S. Patient awareness of palliative care: systematic review. BMJ Support Palliat Care. 2023;13(2):136-142.
2. Jawed A, Comer AR. Disparities in end-of-life care for racial minorities: a narrative review. Annals of Palliative Medicine. 2024;13(2):309-321.
3. Smith GM, Singh N, Hui F, et al. Education About Specialty Palliative Care Among Nonhealthcare Workers: A Systematic Review. J Pain Symptom Manage. 2024;67(1):e70-e89.
4. Riffin C, Kenien C, Ghesquiere A, et al. Community-based participatory research: understanding a promising approach to addressing knowledge gaps in palliative care. Ann Palliat Med. 2016;5(3):218-224.
5. Barnestein-Fonseca P, Nebro-Gil A, Aguiar-Leiva VP, et al. Barriers and drivers of public engagement in palliative care, Scoping review. BMC Palliative Care. 2024;23(1):117.