Robert W. Buckingham, Dr.P.H., is a hospice pioneer, educator, and author whose work has shaped end-of-life care across the globe.

My journey in hospice care began in 1974, while I was still a graduate student at Yale. At a time when dying patients were often isolated and forgotten in hospitals, I wrote the grant proposal that helped establish Hospice of New Haven, the first hospice program in the United States. What began as an ambitious vision soon became my life’s mission: to ensure that every person, regardless of age or illness, could die with dignity, surrounded by compassion.

Over the next five decades, this mission led me to co-develop 81 hospice programs across the world, including the first hospice for children with AIDS in Thailand. My work has been recognized with honors such as the Ivanosky Prize in Humanitarian Medicine (1992) and the Nelson Mandela Award for Academic Leadership from Harvard University (2014).

Alongside building programs, I have devoted my life to writing and teaching. My thirteen books—seven dedicated exclusively to hospice and palliative care—capture the wisdom my patient-teachers shared with me at the end of their lives. Their lessons on love, forgiveness, simplicity, and meaning have shaped not only how we approach death, but how we choose to live.

Today, as Professor Emeritus of Public Health at the University of Michigan, I continue to speak, write, and teach about what the dying have taught me. My mission remains unchanged: to help transform how we understand life, death, and the care we offer one another in our final days.