SHD initiatives

• End-of-Life Care. For nearly 15 years, SHD has played a leadership role in end-of-life care at local, state, and national levels. Beginning in the mid-90s, SHD sponsored the ECHO Project, a regional consumer-provider endeavor acclaimed nationally for its success in identifying critical elements that facilitate patient/family decision-making and improve end-of-life care in hospitals. Current SHD work includes activities in the Sacramento regional Compassionate Care Alliance and statewide California Coalition for Compassionate Care.
  
  
• Health Care Costs. Since 2000, SHD has created projects, programs and publications that explore the most difficult and controversial aspect of health care reform: controlling the rising cost of health care. With particular emphasis on capturing the public's voice on priority-setting and trade-offs, SHD is shining a light on some of the difficult policy questions that society faces. Projects under this initiative include:
  
  What Matters Most
  Just Coverage
  Getting Good Value
  Medi-Cal CHAT
  Capitol Region CHAT
  Visible Fairness

SHD 10th Year Report

Speaking Up: A decade of bringing the public's voice to healthcare policy and practice provides a summary of the SHD's work from 1994-2004 to address two major issues: improving care at the end of life and allocating finite healthcare resources.