About

The mission of the Take Charge of Your Life Partnership is to educate, support and empower all people to deal with end-of-life issues through an innovative network of consumers, professionals, community organizations and corporations.



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History



2000

Our organization began as a group of supporters of the PBS series, On Our Own Terms: Moyers on Dying. We helped to publicize the broadcast, staffed the phone bank at our local PBS station and created a resource guide to support phone bank volunteers and the community at large.



In rallying to support the Moyers broadcast, we took his words to heart -- "If we are going to change the way we die, then we are going to have to start talking about it, and then, take action." We created a lasting alliance as the End-of-Life Partnership of W. Pa.



We joined with the National Issues Forum to convene a series of community meetings on end-of-life issues in our region. Our organization was recognized as one with promise in the November 17, 2000 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association



2001 - 2002

We became an official 501 (c) (3) non-profit corporation in 2001. We began featuring speakers on end-of-life topics at our plenary meetings and invited the public to attend these educational sessions.



We then designed and kicked off our "Take Charge of Your Life" campaign, training our members and other community volunteers to hold workshops on advance care planning for community groups. Our partners were the Allegheny County Bar Association's Young Lawyers Division and Highmark/Blue Cross/Blue Shield. The Mayor of Pittsburgh and the Chief Executive of Allegheny County issued proclamations of "Take Charge of Your Life Month."



Partnering with Senior Services of the West Penn Allegheny Health System, we co-sponsored the 16th Annual Regional Geriatric Forum on "Rethinking End-of-Life Care."



At the conclusion of our community forums project, over 400 area residents had participated in 26 forums held in libraries, places of worship, schools and other settings throughout our region. We issued a report on our findings, Western Pennsylvanians Talk About Death and Dying on Their Own Terms.



In the fall of 2002, we served as the area's official outreach coalition for the PBS documentary on caregiving, "And Thou Shalt Honor," promoting the program, staffing the phone banks, and collaborating with United Way to create a Caregivers Resource Guide.



We received a grant from the Allegheny County Bar Association to continue the outreach of our "Take Charge of Your Life" campaign to assisted living centers. In addition, we co-sponsored the 17th Annual Regional Geriatric Forum on "Rethinking End-of-Life Care -- Continuing the Conversation."



2003 - 2004

Building on the successes of our "Take Charge" campaign, we agreed to change out name to the "Take Charge of Your Life Partnership." We laid plans for "Take Charge Online," a project to provide information and answer questions about advance care planning and other topics via streaming video on the Internet. In the fall of 2003, we sought and received a grant to start this project from Rallying Points, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.



In February 2004, two "Heart2Heart" interviews became available on our website, takechargeonline.org. In partnership with MedRespond, a company with the exclusive license to use a question-and-answer technology developed at Carnegie Mellon University, Take Charge of Your Life now provides friendly, person-to-person information on advance care planning, and on hospice and palliative care.



In September, our partnership was one of three coaltions in the U.S. to receive an Award of Excellence from Rallying Points, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. This award is making it possible for us to continue to provide information that consumers and their families need, 24/7 on the Internet.



2005 - 2006

In 2005, the Take Charge of Your Life Partnership joined the the newly formed Coalition for Quality at the End of Life (CQEL), and began working on the Governor's Task Force for Quality at the End of Life in Pennsylvania. One of our partnership's founders, Dr. Peggy Stubbs, with input from other Take Charge members as well as experts from around the state, composed and edited the chapter on public awareness.



In 2006, we partnered with Chatham College to sponsor "Just Talk About It," the first in a series of "Community Conversations" in Western Pennsylvania. Our keynote speaker was attorney Bill Colby, senior Fellow of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization and author of two books about the complicated issues society faces at the end-of-life: "Long Goodbye: The Deaths of Nancy Cruzan" and "Unplugged: Reclaiming Our Right to Die in America." The Take Charge Partnership also made it possible for Mr. Colby to address audiences from the University of Pittburgh, the Allegheny County ABA and St. Clair Hospital.



From our inception, we have continued to hold educational forums, featuring experts on bioethics, grief work, hospice and palliative care, end-of-life choices, the creation and execution of advance directives, and death education programs, as well as inspirational subjects such as dreams of the dying. , we renamed our program "Take Charge of Your Lunch Break," inviting participants from all backgrounds to bring their lunch and learn about developments in end-of-life care. In 2006, we featured experts leading discussion of the papers in the Hasting Center Report, "Improving End of Life Care: Why Has It Been So Difficult?".



2007

In February, Improving End-of-Life Experiences for Pennsylvanians: Report and Recommendations by the Task Force for Quality at the End of Life was presented to Governor Ed Rendell. Members of Take Charge made substantial contributions to the chapter on "Addressing the Community," and after its publication, took up the challenge of raising public awareness. We created a video project to continue our "Just Talk About It" theme, to encourage individuals to talk with loved ones about their end-of-life wishes, and to designate a health care agent to act as a representative in the event of disability. By the end of 2007, we had completed production of two one-minute spots that are suitable for broadcast television or the Internet.