Memphis Comfort Care Coalition - Who We Are
The Mid-South Comfort Care Coalition (MCCC) was formed as a Rallying Points group that has a mission to serve as a broad based community network to educate members of the community and advocate for people with life-threatening illness and end of life concerns. The MCCC was founded in November, 2002, as an outgrowth of the University of Tennessee Health Sciences Center College of Nursing 2002 Cashdollar Lecture. The Cashdollar Lectures are an endowed series of annual lectures that supply local health care providers with up to date information to improve the quality of care they give to dying individuals. The MCCC received not-for-profit status in June, 2004.
The goals of the Coalition include:
- Build a broad based community network
- Inform the community via media and the arts
- Create a speakers bureau
- Provide community education via literature, workshops, and symposia
- Secure funding
Members of the Coalition come from all areas of the community: education, faith based groups, the arts, entertainment, healthcare providers, caregivers, and the community at large. Coalition partners includes St. Francis Hospital, the Church Health Center's Hope and Healing Facility, University of Tennessee Health Science Center College of Nursing, Odyssey Healthcare, Methodist Alliance Hospice, Calvary Episcopal Church, and the Mid-South Biomedical Ethics Center (MBEC), a second local Rallying Points coalition. The diversity of the group attending monthly Coalition meetings demonstrates our broad base of participation and support.
Accomplishments include: hosting a community forum on April 22, 2004, Matters of Life and Death: Advancing Excellence in End-of-Life Care, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; hosting a follow-up forum on July 16, 2004, Advancing Excellence in End-of-Life Care: Next Steps, with Tennessee Commissioner of Health, Kenneth Robinson, M.D., as the principal speaker; and engaging community members in training, teaching and speaking in all areas of end-of-life in Memphis. The Coalition has a speakers bureau that makes presentations locally on topics related to end-of-life care. In addition, we are creating a task force to address faith community issues from an ecumenical, culturally sensitive perspective. As a function of its partnership with the MBEC, the MCCC sends two representatives to monthly meetings of the MBEC Memphis Area Institutional Advance Care Planning Task Force, which is composed of representatives from Methodist-LeBonheur Healthcare, Baptist Memorial Healthcare, St. Francis Hospital, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, the VA Medical Center, and the MCCC.