My journey in hospice care began in 1974 while 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 started as an ambitious vision soon became my life’s mission: to ensure that every person, no matter their 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 globe, 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 12 books—7 dedicated solely to hospice and palliative care—capture the wisdom my patient-teachers shared with me at the end of their lives. These lessons on love, forgiveness, simplicity, and meaning have guided not only how we approach death, but how we choose to live fully.
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 the same: to change how the world understands life, death, and the care we give each other in our final days.