Palliative care — with its whole-person approach to enhancing the quality of life for patients with serious illness — has become increasingly available in California. However, most rural communities, often medically underserved, offer only limited or no palliative care.

Through a request for proposal (RFP) process, the California Health Care Foundation is funding seven rural-focused stakeholder teams to develop a vision and plan for increasing rural palliative care access. The planning grants range from $20,000 to $30,000 to support a four-month planning process (January-April 2017).

Teams will include at minimum a health care provider organization (such as a hospice, medical group, or health system) and a payer (such as a health plan). Plans can focus on enhancing access in an entire rural county, a portion of a county, or in an area that crosses county lines. The only requirement is that the intended service area includes at least one of California’s Rural Expansion Counties and that the defined service area experience at least 200 deaths per year.

These are the selected organizations: