Allison Silvers Draws Parallels Between Community Health and Palliative Care

Before Allison Silvers became vice president of payment and policy at the Center to Advance Palliative Care, she ran an information center that helped the elderly. In both of these roles, she has helped people make the best possible choices after evaluating all of their options.

Transcript (slightly modified)

How have your experiences with community health shaped your work with the Center to Advance Palliative Care?

I spent a number of years running a senior information center where older adults in need would just come in, it was a storefront, and they would need help with housing or social services or finding good care. It was a really good flavor of people not knowing what their options are, and I think that same thing is true for palliative care. People are given a diagnosis, obviously there’s a lot of emotional turmoil that goes with getting diagnoses, and your doctor then informs you of what they recommend.

But typically there’s a whole menu of treatment options, and that’s not adequately communicated, and there’s also a lot of other needs that you have that wouldn’t even be addressed with treatment: spiritual needs, family reconciliation needs, et cetera. So I think that idea of giving people options and helping them think through their options is what’s common.