Report on Open Society Institute’s Project on Palliative Care

Transforming the Culture of Dying: The Project on Death in America, October 1994 to December 2003 is an overview of the Open Society Institute’s $45-million grant-making program to improve care for dying people and their families. It traces how the nine-year Project on Death in America, one of the first major U.S. grant-making efforts by the philanthropist George Soros, developed financing strategies and identified key areas where philanthropic donations could help reduce suffering among terminally ill people. The report recommends that other grant makers work to expand the number of medical-school faculty members who focus on palliative care, finance continuing-education opportunities for health-care workers, and establish centers to train doctors in palliative care.

Publisher: Open Society Institute, 400 West 59th Street, Third Floor, New York, N.Y. 10019; (212) 548-0600; http://www.soros.org; 68 pages; available free on the Open Society Institute’s Web site.