Palliative Care and African American Women Living with HIV

It is challenging to develop and assess skills in a classroom setting, for graduate students particularly, in the area of quality improvement project plans that are real, relevant, and sensitive in a unique health care context. Although understanding significant issues related to palliative care needs of U.S. citizens through the interpretation of those who publish in this area is extremely helpful to students, it does not allow for an experience uniquely situated in realities faced by those living with life-threatening and chronic illness or in a time frame that is current. Graduate students in a Health Resources and Services Administration-funded program of study completed a secondary data analysis of digitally recorded conversations of African American women living with human immunodeficiency virus or acquired immune deficiency syndrome to identify consumer-driven palliative care needs and create possible quality improvement program solutions. This exercise supports the World Health Organization's advice to become palliative care leaders through engagement in clients' realities.