Kōkua Mau Vision and Mission
Kōkua Mau’s vision is a community where:
the people of Hawai‘i are treated with dignity, compassion and love throughout their lives.
To make that vision a reality, Kōkua Mau’s mission is:
to weave a lei of caregiving and support so that the people of Hawai‘i facing serious illness can live in the place of their choice, with relief of pain and suffering and according to their values, beliefs and traditions.
Current Kōkua Mau Activities
As the statewide Movement to Improve Care, Kōkua Mau collaborates with key partners and stakeholders to advance our mission and vision. This is an short overview of current projects
POLST
POLST (Physicians Orders of Life-Sustaining Treatment) is nationally recognized as a best practice that helps insure people’s wishes are honored and they receive the appropriate level of care in the last weeks and months of life. POLST can prevent patients from receiving unwanted or unnecessary care, increase patient and family satisfaction, and reduce hospital readmissions and emergency room visits for inappropriate care. Kōkua Mau was crucial in the successful passage of POLST legislation in 2009 and 2014 and our website is the state repository for the POLST form, explanatory information, and free materials to download to educate providers and consumers. We also provide a Speakers Bureau and an advisory committee to answer questions.
Education and Networking for Professionals
Kōkua Mau is committed to helping professionals provide the best care possible and invites professionals to participate in our activities. These include a free eNewsletter, a bi-monthly clinical discussion “Palliative Pupus” and a monthly Kōkua Mau meeting with guest speakers and local and national updates. (All are welcome!) Kōkua Mau offers occasional trainings and workshops, such as the highly acclaimed Educational summit in Nov. 2011 or the annual hosting of the Virtual Palliative Care Conferences at a central location in Hawaii.
Talk Story Project
Kōkua Mau wants to get our community talking about wishes for care at the end of life. Our new Let’s Talk Story Program will go out to community organizations, churches and temples with our free, 2-hour interactive sessions facilitated by Kōkua Mau’s trained experts. We know these are not easy conversations but they are some of the most important that you will ever have.
We want to help individuals and families to understand decisions they may need to make and find resources and information in our community to talk about their wishes for care at the end of life.
Advance Care Planning Materials
Kōkua Mau’s website has a wide array of materials and resources for people and their loved ones facing serious illness. We recognize the choices people face are not easy and strive to provide the best information possible. We provide at no cost, materials to download including advance directive brochure and forms, “Questions about CPR”, “Tubefeeding” and POLST materials. A longer, 16-page comprehensive brochure “A Guide to Advance Care Planning: Making Life Decisions” has been updated twice so far.
Supportive Care Pilot
Kōkua Mau has been working for nearly 7 years with HMSA on a concurrent care benefit, which allows people with serious illness to enroll in hospice at the same time as receiving disease-modifying treatments. We hope that this will eliminate the “terrible choice” that people need to make and allow them to take advantage of the hospice benefit as early as possible. The program rolled out in 2013. Two providers in Hawai‘i, UHA and HMSA offer this benefit – a first in the nation.
Quality Improvement Project
HMSA’s quality improvement project, which provides incentives to facilities to meet quality measures, includes “End-of-Life” measures. Kōkua Mau worked with HMSA to provide background on the issues and made recommendations for measures that will help to improve care for seriously ill people, many of which have been incorporated by HMSA. For those facilities that have fulfilled these measures, this translates into a substantial financial payment.
Outreach to the Public
Our highly regarded website is constantly updated (kokuamau.org) and contains information and free materials to download. We respond to telephone inquiries, especially important for those with no internet access. People from all walks of life call with a wide array of questions from a small doctor’s office looking for half a dozen green POLST forms, to an elderly resident wanting to find out more about Advance Directive and POLST.
Highlights of Kōkua Mau’s 2010 Activities
This past year has seen a lot of activity for Kōkua Mau. The highlights include:
POLST
Kōkua Mau has become the central repository for information and forms about POLST (Physicians Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment).
Information geared at both providers and the public can be found and/or downloaded from our website. Kōkua Mau coordinates speakers about POLST across the state and is currently coordinating trainings on neighbor islands in collaboration with the hospices. This travel is made possible by a grant from the HMSA Foundation.
IMPRESS (Improving Professional Education, Sustaining Support) and Care Project.
The IMPRESS project worked with 5 long-term care facilities on O‘ahu to improve palliative and end-of-life care educating staff though 6 hour-long workshops and working with administration to implement policy and program changes.
Positive changes were seen in the facilities especially with the implementation of POLST and in pain management. Full results are still being compiled and will be available in early 2011. We arelooking forward to expanding this project in the coming years. This program was made possible with generous support by the Hawai‘i Chamber of Commerce Public Health Fund.
KOKUA MAU’S OUTREACH ACROSS THE PACIFIC
Kōkua Mau has completed its Palliative Care Curriculum for the United States Affiliated Pacific Islands (USAPI). More
A collaborative effort by many Kōkua Mau members the curriculum focuses on the basics of palliative care, taking into consideration the different resource levels of the islands. Palliative care is especially important in the USAPI as people have few treatment options and present late with their disease. Family and community is very strong and care for loved ones is already being provided so it is hoped that with training people can relieve the suffering and increase people’s quality of life.
The implementation of the extensive curriculum is combined with workshops and trainings that already took place in the Republic of Palau and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. This important and exciting groundbreaking work is made possible in collaboration with the Pacific CEED program at the UH John A. Burns School of Medicine. Implementation of the program is scheduled for 2011 in Pohnpei and Kosrae and being considered in Guam and American Samoa.
EDUCATIONAL OFFERINGS
In March 2010 Shirley Otis-Green, a nationally known clinical social worker and Senior Research Specialist in Nursing Research and Education at the City of Hope held a well attended Kōkua Mau workshop hosted at JABSOM.
Her talk Integrating Spirituality into Palliative Care Palliative Care focused on their consensus project for developing spiritual care in palliative care, recognizing spirituality is often neglected in healthcare, despite its importance to people. Her second talk: Building a Strong Palliative Care Team: Lessons Learned from the ACE Project (Advocating for Clinical Excellence) presented a hands-on, cutting-edge advocacy and training program for an interdisciplinary educational approach to palliative care. A recent meeting with Shirley had inspired a group here in Hawaii to work on Spiritual Care in Palliative Care.
Janette Sargeant-Hamill has offered 4 workshops this year to help families tell their stories. These workshops entitled: Your Family; Your History, will continue in 2011. Click here for details.
OUR WEBSITE & e-NEWSLETTER
Our constantly updated website is our interface with the public, that provides access to information 24/7 including in the wee hours of the morning, when people seeking help cannot just pick up the phone and call somebody. A monthly e-newsletter provides a quick overview of events, publications, conferences and news, local and national, about palliative care and hospice.
Highlights of Kōkua Mau’s 2009 Activities
This past year has seen a lot of activity for Kōkua Mau. The highlights include:
1. POLST
Passage and implementation of POLST (Physicians Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment) legislation which will improve patients’ ability to have their wishes for end-of-life care honored. This is considered best practice nationally and the POLST team has done a great job implementing this groundbreaking legislation. Kōkua Mau’s website is the central repository for official forms and information and has been recognized nationally for our work.
2. IMPRESS (Improving Professional Education, Sustaining Support) and Care Project
The IMPRESS project is working with 5 long-term care facilities on O‘ahu to improve palliative and end-of-life care by educating staff though 6 hour-long workshops and working with administration to implement policy and program changes. We hope this program becomes a model for future trainings in other care facilities across the State and is made possible with generous support by the Hawaii Chamber of Commerce and the Hawai‘i Community Foundation.
3. OUTREACH ACROSS THE PACIFIC
Trainings for US Associated Pacific Island Jurisdictions (USPI) on palliative care.
Kōkua Mau has provided expertise and speakers from our network in training cancer control leaders around the Pacific including in April a very successful 2.5 day training in Honolulu – Caring the Pacific Way.
Implementing palliative care or end-of-life programs, often for the first time, was addressed community-wide with trainings for health care professionals to policy makers in Palau and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. The success of these workshops lead to other jurisdictions requesting trainings as well and we look forward to future collaborations in 2010. This important and exciting groundbreaking work is made possible in collaboration with the Pacific CEED program at the UH John A. Burns School of Medicine. More
4. KōKUA MAU WEBSITE, NEWSLETTER & EDUCATIONAL OFFERINGS
Providing statewide education and information through the new and improved, constantly updated website is our interface with the public. A monthly newsletter provides a quick in-depth overview. We also strive to offer educational opportunities and intend to offer more in the new year. Our most recent co-sponsorship with the Queen’s Medical Center brought nationally renowned Teepa Snow to Hawai’i to teach caregivers to deal with dementia in loved ones.
Kōkua Mau collaborates with Hawaii’s Comprehensive Cancer Control Program
Kōkua Mau is pleased to be collaborating with HCCCP. We are conducting a survey of collaboration in other states between the CCCP and hospice and palliative care organizations. We will be compiling the responses for a report that can be used by other states to find creative and effective ways of working together on this important aspect of the cancer care continuum.
If you are from a CCCP, you can access the survey monkey survey here and thank you for your help.
– Kōkua Mau awarded 2 grants in February 2009 –
Improving Professional Education, Sustaining Support (IMPRESS) and Care Project for work in Long Term Care Facilities
To download the one page sheet about IMPRESS, please click here
To apply for the IMPRESS project please download the RFP
Climbing Higher: Organizational Capacity Building Grant
The grant has three parts:
- Build Strategic Relationships. Through a survey of stakeholder needs and interests, Kōkua Mau will better understand our constituents. This will allow Kōkua Mau to provide improved programs and services and increase its membership base.
- Resource Development. In order to better understand and cater to the educational needs of our constituents, Kōkua Mau will research and develop relevant resources. This might provide new revenue for Kōkua Mau.
- Evaluation and Impact. We need to develop methods to measure the clinical and non-clinical impact of our work.
Because Kōkua Mau is an umbrella organization for organizations and individuals invested in hospice, the impact of these grants will be felt throughout the state. The ultimate effect will be increased healthcare capacity throughout the community, improved care for people living with serious illness and their loved ones, more effective options to better utilize scarce resources and a true continuum of care from birth through death in Hawai‘i.