We need financial support to continue PC-HEART and the website. We are also seeking financial support for specific projects. Any amount of support will be helpful. You can donate online here. Please contact Sarah Goodlin, Director of PC-HEART, for more information or if you are interested in helping us accomplish our work in any way.

We need financial support to continue PC-HEART and the website. We are also seeking financial support for specific projects. Any amount of support will be helpful. You can donate online here. Please contact Sarah Goodlin, Director of PC-HEART, for more information or if you are interested in helping us accomplish our work in any way.

Current Funders

The work of PC-HEART has been greatly assisted to date by generous support from the following organizations:

• Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provided crucial start-up funding
• National Hospice Work Group provided generous operational support to projects in 2004 and 2005.
• The Epimetrics Group donated website operational services in 2005
• Scios, Inc. provided unrestricted educational grants for PC-HEART educational projects and meetings at the 2003 Heart Failure Society of America conference and “Ethical Issues in Care for Persons with Advanced Heart Failure”.
• Medtronics, Abbott, and the Byrne Foundation also helped to support the “Ethical Issues in Care for Persons with Advanced Heart Failure” conference.
• Foundation for Hospice, Northern Utah, Inc funded a survey of hospice nurses’needs and knowledge about heart failure and an educational program to address those needs.
• Patrick Byrne and the Byrne Foundation provided support for website-based symptom data collection
• The Mayday Fund provided funding for the PAIN-HF (Pain Assessment, Incidence & Nature in Heart Failure) study
• The St. Jude Medical Foundation provided important seed money to develop expert and practicing physician in put into a decision tool about implantable cardioverter defibrillators.
• Boston Scientific CARE program provided partial support for a project to understand patient and family decision making about implantable devices.

General support for PC-HEART

We must raise about $75,000 per year to fund:

• the collaborative website that facilitates communication between investigators
• administration of the collaborative
• pilot research projects to collect preliminary data to focus larger studies

Specific projects for which we are seeking funding

• Education for hospice nurses about heart failure care
• Caring for patients with heart failure requires specific knowledge and assessment skills that most nurses have not learned. We will assess the education needs of nurses working in hospice and develop educational programs to improve their ability to care for heart failure patients.
• Communication with heart failure patients & and their families
• We will conduct focus groups or interviews to learn what information is important to patients with heart failure and their families, and how they can best receive this information.
• We will conduct educational sessions for heart failure specialists to improve their comfort and skill communicating with patients and their families about decisions regarding approaches to care, their preferences for treatment and for resuscitation from cardiac or respiratory arrest, and about dying from heart failure.
• Evaluation of the cost and outcomes of care
• We will evaluate different approaches to care for patients with advanced heart failure and their cost to care providers.
• Treatment of common symptoms in advanced heart failure
• We will evaluate treatments to reduce shortness of breath and fatigue in patients with advanced heart failure.

How You Can Contribute

PC-HEART’s parent organization, Patient-centered Education and Research, Inc., was formed in May 2003 as a non-profit corporation to conduct studies to improve patient-centered care. Patient-centered care focuses on understanding patient preferences and manage symptoms to the level of comfort desired. It attempts to reduce the burden of illness on the patient and their family.

Contributions to Patient-centered Education and Research are tax-deductible, in accordance with Section 501©(3) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986.

If you are interested in supporting our work, please contact Sarah Goodlin MD.

Contributions may be also sent to

PC-HEART
Patient-centered Education & Research, Inc.
681 East 17th Avenue
Salt Lake City, UT 84103

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