Mission

To create, disseminate and evaluate educational programs to improve the lives of the elderly and their families in Chicago and beyond. Our goals are to:

1. To educate medical students, residents, fellows and practicing physicians in principles of aging and the care of the elderly.


2. To integrate principles of aging and the care of the elderly into all medical specialties.


3. To educate non-physician health care providers in principles of aging.


4. To educate the elderly whom we serve and their families.

The EPEC Project

The EPEC Project is an initiative to provide training to health care professionals in end-of-life and palliative care. The EPEC Project conducts train-the-trainer and professional development conferences, provides extensive educational materials, as well an online learning adaptation of the complete EPEC Curriculum for Continuing Medical Education (CME) credit. For more information, please visit the EPEC web site.

The Education in Palliative and End-of-life Care - Oncology (EPEC-O) Project, funded by the National Cancer Institute and the Lance Armstrong Foundation, adapts and extends the EPEC curriculum specifically for cancer care. The project also conducts train-the-trainer conferences in collaboration with the American Society of Clinical Oncology. The EPEC-O Curriculum has been adapted for Online learning for Continuing Medical Education credits, and will be available to the public soon.

A Lance Armstrong Foundation funded project, "EPEC-O for Patients and Caregivers: Motivating and Coordinating Survivor and Caregiver Education with Health Care Provider Education" seeks to create, beta test and refine materials for a motivational workshop that will demonstrate how survivors and their families can take on a positive, proactive role and relationship to their cancer and health care. The materials will include a motivational trigger tape to engage the participants’ enthusiasm and openness to change, curriculum content materials, and informational brochures about goals of care.

The Education in Palliative and End-of-life Care - Emergency Medicine (EPEC-EM) Project seeks to adapt and extend the EPEC Curriculum specifically for the Emergency Department setting. The project will disseminate that curriculum, conduct interventions coupling training with clinical reminders, and assess improvements in attitudes, knowledge, skills, as well as clinical outcomes including clinical behaviors and patient outcomes.

The Education in Palliative and End-of-life Care - International (EPEC-International) Project is seeking to extend the dissemination of the EPEC Curriculum internationally.

Dr. Emanuel is the principal investigator of a Patient Safety Education Project project funded by the Zell Center for Risk and the Jewish Health Care Foundation that plans to create a curriculum-driven, education-dissemination program that follows the EPEC model of education dissemination and train-the-trainer approach. It will train teams of physicians, nurses, and administrators on advancing safety in health care services. The first meeting of leaders in patient safety will be held at the Institute of Medicine in D.C. in May 2006. This project has also received a generous grant from the Zell Foundation to produce trigger tapes for the Patient Safety Curriculum.