City programs pitch African-Americans on the benefits of hospice care - baltimoresun.com

City programs pitch African-Americans on the benefits of hospice care - baltimoresun.com: Although hospice care has dramatically increased in popularity over the past few decades, of the 1.6 million Americans who used such services last year, about 82 percent were Caucasian and fewer than 9 percent African-American. And in Maryland, predominantly white localities finish near the top in terms of hospice use.

"In the black community, you rarely hear people even talk about hospice, and when you do, people tend to be wary about it," says G.I. Johnson of the Office of Aging and Care Services, a division of Baltimore's health department.

Now local health officials are trying to do get more African-Americans interested in hospice care by enlisting a group — ministers —with unique access to the discussion of end-of-life issues.

Last month, the city rolled out an outreach program by sponsoring a conference at Morgan State University. About a dozen hospice care professionals, most of them African-American, extolled the benefits of end-of-life care to an audience that included about 200 black ministers.