To create, disseminate, and evaluate educational programs in order to improve the lives of older people and their families. Our goals are to:

• educate medical students, residents, fellows, and practicing physicians in the principles of aging and the care of older people;
• integrate principles of aging and the care of older people into all medical specialties;
• educate nonphysician health care providers in the principles of aging;
• educate the older people that we serve and their families.

The EPEC Program is an initiative that provides training in end-of-life and palliative care to health care professionals. The EPEC Program conducts train-the-trainer and professional development conferences and provides extensive educational materials as well an online learning adaptation of the complete EPEC Curriculum for continuing medical education (CME) credit. For more information, please visit the EPEC web site.

The Education in Palliative and End-of-life Care - Oncology (EPEC-O) Program, funded by the National Cancer Institute and the Lance Armstrong Foundation, adapts and extends the EPEC Curriculum specifically for cancer care. The project also conducts train-the-trainer conferences in collaboration with the American Society of Clinical Oncology. The EPEC-O Curriculum has been adapted for online learning for continuing medical education credits and will soon be available to the public.

The Lance Armstrong Foundation funded project, "EPEC-O for Patients and Caregivers: Motivating and Coordinating Survivor and Caregiver Education with Health Care Provider Education" seeks to create, beta test, and refine materials for a motivational workshop that will demonstrate how survivors and their families can take a positive, proactive role in the treatment of their cancer. The materials will include a motivational trigger tape to engage the participant's enthusiasm and openness to change, curriculum content materials, and informational brochures about goals of care.

The Education in Palliative and End-of-life Care - Emergency Medicine (EPEC-EM) Program seeks to adapt and extend the EPEC Curriculum specifically for the emergency department setting. The project will disseminate the curriculum, conduct interventions that combine training and clinical reminders, and assess improvements in attitudes, knowledge, and skills, as well as clinical outcomes (including clinical behaviors and patient outcomes).

The Education in Palliative and End-of-life Care - International (EPEC-International) Program is seeking to extend the dissemination of the EPEC Curriculum internationally.

Dr. Emanuel is the principal investigator of the Patient Safety Education Project funded by the Zell Center for Risk and the Jewish Health Care Foundation. The goal is to create a curriculum-driven, education dissemination program that follows the EPEC model of education dissemination and train-the-trainer approach. It will train teams of physicians, nurses, and administrators in ways to advance safety in health care. The first meeting was held at the Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C. in May 2006 and was attended by leaders in the field of patient safety. This project has also received a generous grant from the Zell Foundation to produce trigger tapes for the Patient Safety Curriculum.