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Grant Project funded by National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Lightways Hospice and Serious Illness Care will join a nationwide project and host a community game event at Ascension Saint Joseph Hospital Wallin Conference Center from 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m., Monday, June 24 to engage communities in important conversations about medical decision making. The event, featuring the conversation game Hello, will provide information about how to prepare for future decisions about serious and critical health issues. Complimentary dinner and refreshments will be provided.

“This game will help you prepare for situations you may not have considered before,” Kathy Peterson, Senior Director of Marketing and Business Development. “It makes conversations like these much more fun and meaningful.”

The advance care planning topic can be difficult, but it is a necessary one to discuss. The community game day event will bring people together for an enjoyable discussion about living well and quality end-of-life care. Participants will receive information about medical decision-making and an advance directive that they may choose to complete. This event is a first step to advance care planning, and every participant will leave prepared to continue the conversation and take important steps to ensure their end-of-life care goals are known.

The Hello events are part of a large, NIH-funded research study led by Lauren Jodi Van Scoy, M.D. at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, through her research program, Project Talk. Hospice Foundation of America and the University of Kentucky are partners on the project. Participants who opt-in to participate can receive up to $90 in gift cards for their time.

Learning how best to engage communities in activities such as these is crucial to improving access to high quality of care later in life. Lightways Hospice and Serious Illness Care will help the Joliet community have conversations like these more often and more easily.

Register for the event by June 18 online at Project Talk Hello Event – Lightways or email Kathy Peterson at [email protected] for more information.

Portrait photo of Duane Krieger

As you may know by now, Mr. Duane Krieger died last week. Lightways Hospice and Serious Illness care had the privilege of caring for him and his family in our inpatient unit in Joliet. What you may not know is that Duane was CEO of the organization (Joliet Area Community Hospice at the time), who found the land, raised the money, and put the first shovel in the ground to build that inpatient unit! The first hospice inpatient residence (inpatient unit) in the state of Illinois. Duane made it possible for this state to finally care for dying patients in an inpatient facility staffed 24/7 by nurses, nurses’ aides, social workers, chaplains, physicians, integrative therapists, volunteers, and physical therapists. A sixteen-bed facility that felt like home on a beautiful property surrounded by a pond, a walking path, flowers, trees as well as our administrative building. Hospices from around the state came to see the residence in Joliet, myself included while I worked for another organization also building a residence.

By his side all those years, was his wife Dee, who is still a member of our Hospice Guild. The Guild has raised over $1M to support our mission including the inpatient unit.

Since Duane’s vision became a reality in 2004, we have been able to increase the number of beds to twenty and then to twenty-four thanks to Natalie Manley and the state of Illinois. In 2023 we cared for 753 patients in that hospice unit. The state of Illinois has only eight of these facilities.

I will be forever grateful to Duane for his commitment to this community and the care of hospice patients. He is the definition of grass roots advocacy and doing the right thing. And I will miss him, his stories, and his happy “Cheers” when he said goodbye. Cheers Duane, until I see you again.

Sincerely,

Mary Kay Sheehan
CEO
Lightways Hospice and Serious Illness Care