Hawai’i coalition launches advance directives campaign
Hawaii residents are urged to make advance end-of-life care decisionsto avoid the kind of
controversy that surrounded Terri Schiavo’s deatha year ago Friday in Florida.
Schiavo suffered brain damage after a heart attack in 1990. She had noadvance directive and her parents and her husband battled in court overremoval of her feeding tube. Congress and the White House becameinvolved in the controversy.
Kokua Mau, the Hawaii end-of-life care coalition, will launch a”statewide consumer engagement campaign” tomorrow to help people withadvance care planning, said Rachael S. Wong, project coordinator.
For the past two years, the organization has concentrated on advancecare planning, hospice and palliative care and is now going into thecommunity, she said.
Kokua Mau has received $75,000 from the HMSA Foundation for the project, she said.
Trained health care professionals will educate residents about theimportance of advance care planning and provide Five Wishes advancedirectives with lifetime electronic storage by Health DirectivePartners in Waipio, Wong said.
Read more in the Star Bulletin.
Jim Pietsch, director of the Elder Law Program at the University of Hawai’i, is quoted extensively in the article.