The arrival of COVID-19 has given people a renewed consciousness of their own mortality and raised the relevancy of end-of-life planning, according to Samantha Trad of Compassion & Choices, the nation’s largest end-of-life advocacy group.
Due to the coronavirus, instead of focusing on advancing legislation, Compassion & Choices has set its sights on helping people plan their end-of-life health care by holding free webinars and providing free online tools to enable them to complete or update their advance directive and appoint a health care proxy to ensure their health care providers honor their wishes.
“We have COVID-19 tools to help people understand their options and how they can talk to their loved ones,” said Trad, Compassion & Choices state director for California and Hawaii.
“The Latin community and the African American community are the least likely to create a directive,” said Patricia A. Gonzalez-Portillo, national Latino media and constituency director for Compassion & Choices.
Compassion & Choices’ findings suggest black Americans are more likely to receive medical interventions and less likely to receive comfort care at the end of life.
