Palliative Care and Hospice Education and Training Act
The Palliative Care and Hospice Education and Training Act would make a broad set of changes to expand education, training, and career development in palliative and hospice care, and to boost research in this field. It would create new and expanded grant programs to train health professionals (in medicine, nursing, social work, physician assistants, chaplaincy, psychology, etc.) to provide interprofessional, team-based palliative and hospice care. It would support the development and retention of permanent faculty in palliative care at accredited medical and nursing schools and other programs, fund fellowships and career awards to cultivate academic leaders, and incentivize careers in this specialty. The bill also directs NIH to pursue a focused strategy to grow palliative care research and authorizes the dissemination of information about palliative care to patients, families, and professionals. A key goal is to improve access to high-quality palliative care, including in rural, underserved, pediatric, and minority populations, and to integrate palliative care more fully into primary and specialty care settings. The act would take effect about 90 days after enactment, and would authorize new federal funding for these initiatives through 2030.
Key Points
- 1Palliative Care and Hospice Education Programs: The Secretary would award grants or contracts to establish or operate programs that train health professionals in palliative and hospice care, with emphasis on interprofessional collaboration, community integration, and avoiding duplication with existing centers. Priorities would favor rural/underserved areas, pediatric populations, and racial/ethnic minority groups, and encourage integration into primary care and other care settings.
- 2Palliative Medicine Physician Training: The Secretary could fund training projects for physicians to teach or practice palliative medicine, anchored in accredited hospice/palliative medicine fellowship programs and interprofessional team-based training, with defined rotations, performance measures, and options for retraining or longer interprofessional training.
- 3Palliative Care and Hospice Academic Career Awards: A program would be created to award financial support to junior faculty (in medical, nursing, and other relevant programs) to develop careers as academic palliative and hospice care specialists. Awards require a service commitment (e.g., teaching and program development), a requirement to spend most funded time in teaching, and must supplement—not replace—other funding.
- 4Palliative Care Workforce Development: Grants would support a fellowship program to provide short-term, intensive, interprofessional training for faculty and other professionals (e.g., psychology, pharmacy, social work, chaplaincy, PA) to upgrade skills in palliative care. Caps include up to 24 programs and up to $150,000 per award, with targets for expanding interprofessional training and required maintenance of program funding against other funds.
- 5Palliative Care and Hospice Career Incentive Awards: Institutions would receive grants to support individuals pursuing advanced degrees in palliative care across a range of disciplines, with a mandatory service commitment to teach or practice palliative care for at least five years after the award, and payments made to the sponsoring institutions.
- 6Nursing Expansion: The act broadens nurse education and quality grants to explicitly include hospice and palliative nursing, reinforcing the role of nursing in interdisciplinary palliative care education and practice.
- 7Information Dissemination and Research: The Director would disseminate information about palliative care to patients and professionals, publish resources on websites of key federal agencies, and work with professional and patient groups to define “serious or life-threatening illness.” NIH would develop a cross-institute strategy to expand palliative care research and include palliative care reporting in NIH research activities beginning in 2026.
- 8Funding and Effective Date: The act authorizes specific new funding streams: $15 million per year (2026–2030) for the education and training provisions, and $5 million per year (2026–2030) for nursing/education training initiatives. The provisions would take effect 90 days after enactment.