The Coalition for Compassionate Care of California (CCCC) is a statewide partnership dedicated to the advancement of palliative medicine and end-of-life care in California. Instrumental in forming CCCC in 1998, CHCD continues to provide leadership to the organization as a member of its Board of Directors.

POLST (Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment)

CCCC is the lead POLST organization in California. (POLST documents a seriously ill patient's treatment decisions in medical orders.) With funding support from the California HealthCare Foundation, CCCC employs both statewide and local strategies to spread the use of POLST. To assist with its local strategy CHCD:

• produced a white paper summarizing the first year's work and lessons learned from eight community POLST coalitions.
• established a local POLST coalition to help ensure that POLST becomes recognized and commonly used throughout the region.