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An elder man crouches to hug a little girl in a field of flowers

About the Institute

The Palliative Care Institute at Western Washington University is a partnership with Northwest Life Passages Coalition and other community agencies and volunteers to transform palliative care in Whatcom County and support our human responses to living and dying. Our goal is to create a healing community by providing a space where people living with serious illnesses or facing the end of life don’t have to be cured to heal. We build on collaborations among those both inside and outside of the medical industry, reclaiming palliative care as a community responsibility.

What is Palliative Care ?

Palliative care improves the quality of life of patients and their families facing the problems associated with serious or life-threatening illness, through the prevention and relief of suffering by means of early identification and impeccable assessment and treatment of pain and other problems, physical, psychosocial and spiritual.

Learn more about Palliative Care

the back of a couple viewing a sunset, with one person's head laying on the other's shoulder.

Featured Student

 

In Spring 2018, Isa Kaufman and Shay Edward, two students in Dr. Lauren McClanahan’s Filmmaking for Social Change class, created this short film to encourage us to have conversations with our loved ones about our own choices for end of life care.