Fall 2026
Featured
Feature
Breakthrough Therapeutics in Complex Illness
How Academy Members Are Integrating Psychedelics to Ease Distress | For patients facing serious illness, some of the deepest suffering extends beyond physical symptoms. Psychedelic-assisted therapy has emerged as a potential approach for addressing anxiety, depression, and existential distress, with early studies showing promising results. Clinicians and researchers are exploring how these therapies work, which patients may benefit, and what safeguards are needed, while navigating questions of training, regulation, access, and implementation within hospice and palliative care.
In this Issue
A Message from the President
One Field, One Future
One of the things I value most about hospice and palliative medicine is our willingness to sit with difficult questions. We ask patients and families to talk about what matters most, acknowledge uncertainty, and consider when a familiar plan may no longer meet their needs.
Pathways to Palliative Care
From Courtrooms to Charting
One Medical Director’s Mission to Protect Hospice Eligibility | When Kenneth Vermette, MD, reflects on his 4 decades in medicine, he often returns to a quiet afternoon in Fort Worth, Texas. He was visiting a homebound hospice patient, an older gentleman surrounded by instruments...
Roadblocks
When Comfort and Safety Collide
A 72-year-old woman, Lan, with metastatic pancreatic cancer was admitted to home hospice after multiple hospitalizations for progressive abdominal pain, cachexia, and functional decline. She lived with her husband, adult son, and two teenage grandchildren in a small multigenerational home.
DEI LAB
Impacts of Medicare and Medicaid Cuts on Persons with Serious Illness
Mr. R is a 75-year-old man with dementia, COPD, and heart failure. He is being cared for at home by his 47-year-old daughter, and they live in the farmhouse where she grew up in the rural south. He has been followed by specialists 2 hours away and used to go to their local hospital...
Quarterly Progress Report
AAHPM Points of Progress
Read updates from Q3 2026 relevant to the Academy's four strategic goals: advance the field, support professional success, build a vibrant community, and ensure a strong organization.
HMDCB Update
HMDCB Update
HMDCB is partnering with AAHPM to host the Hospice Super Forum from noon to 4 pm CT November 5. This virtual educational event will cover trending topics in hospice care, including certification and recertification, advanced symptom management in the home, and buprenorphine...
AAHPM Partner Updates
ASCENT Update
The Advancing the Science of Palliative Care Across the Lifespan (ASCENT) Consortium, funded by multiple institutes across the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is completing its first year with many accomplishments to note. A national research initiative, the ASCENT Consortium...