Leading MD and star poet to headline at Care Summit

Leading MD and star poet to headline at Care Summit

By Gia Martucci, Marketing and Communication Specialist

Mark Doty, recognized as one of the most accomplished poets in America – and frequently compared to James Merrill and Walt Whitman — will be one of two keynote speakers at the next national Quintessential Care Summit hosted by YoloCares, Sacramento State University Department of Gerontology, and the California Hospice Network on March 15, 2024. 

The Quintessential Care Summit, the region’s premier hospice and palliative care conference, attracts community members, healthcare professionals seeking continuing education credits, caregivers, and clinicians from nearly every discipline.  Last year’s event featured internationally celebrated clinicians Dr. BJ Miller and Teepa Snow, drawing 350 participants to Sacramento State University’s campus.  “The summit offers something for everyone,” according to Louise Joyce, director of community programs at YoloCares.  “Professionals, students, and the community-at-large have all felt that attending the summit is time well spent.  Everyone will walk away with something valuable.”

Mark Doty, who will be traveling from New York, is a noted memoirist praised by the New York Times for his “dazzling, tactile grasp of the world.”  He offers a compelling perspective on how ordinary human experiences can be interpreted.   Known as a maker of big, risky, fearless poems in which ordinary human experience becomes music, he has received two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, a Guggenheim Fellowship, Rockefeller Fellowship, a Whiting Writers Award, a Lila Wallace/Readers Digest Award, and the National Book Award.  In 2011, he was elected a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets.  Mary Oliver, another American poet, says, “One of the things that has been constant about Mark Doty’s work, poetry and prose, is his intense search for the exact word or phrase, of whatever issue, which lead him (and us) into the very furnace of meaning within the human story.”

The author of nine books of poetry and four memoirs, Doty’s first memoir, Heaven’s Coast, brings to life the impotence and rage with which we greet death at what should be life’s richest and most vital moment.  The book chronicles the journey of losing his partner to AIDS, and lays bare the love, hardship, and innumerable gifts that can come from loss and letting go.  He is currently a distinguished professor at Rutgers University, and also teaches in NYU’s low-residency MFA program in Paris.

The Quintessential Care Summit’s other keynote speaker, Cameron Muir, MD, is a nationally recognized leader in hospice and palliative medicine and advanced illness care. Arriving to Sacramento from Washington DC, Muir serves as the chief innovation officer at Capital Caring Health as well as chief innovation officer for the National Partnership for Healthcare & Hospice Innovation (NPHI).  YoloCares is one of just two Sacramento-area hospice organizations to be accepted into NPHI’s membership.

At Capital Caring Health, Muir led the medical staff from 2002 – 2018 which provided over 260,000 hospice and palliative care visits. Additionally, his work on research and program outcomes has resulted in the publication of over a dozen peer-reviewed articles that define innovations and best practices in advanced illness care. With NPHI, Muir serves as the director of the Innovation Lab, as well as chair of the National COVID-19 Task Force.

As the founding program director of Capital Caring Health’s Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME), he has trained more than 30 physicians in hospice and palliative medicine. This program has evolved into lasting partnerships with similar fellowship programs at George Washington University and MedStar Health.

In multiple leadership roles, Muir is both a fellow and the past-president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) and served on the AAHPM board of directors. In addition, he has been a consultant to the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) and for two decades has served on the faculty of the Education for Physicians in End-of-Life Care Project (EPEC).

Current academic appointments include associate professor of medicine at University of Virginia School of Medicine, clinical associate professor of Medicine at George Washington University School of Medicine, and clinical assistant professor of oncology at Johns Hopkins University.

Several other care professionals will join Muir and Doty as Quintessential Care speakers including music-thanatologist Margaret Pasquesi, California Correctional Healthcare Services Hospice Medical Director Michele DiTomas, and Frish Brandt who serves as president of the Frankel Gallery in San Francisco.

Pasquesi was founder of the music thanatology program at Journeycare in Chicago. In this subspecialty of palliative care, practitioners use harps to ease a patient’s symptoms during their final hours, countering normal feelings of fear and anxiety that come with dying. Pasquesi says, “We use music to address the physical manifestations of the dying process.  Our main job is to accompany someone through the final stages of life, and we tailor the music to what is going on physically for the patient.”  Her work has been featured in Crain’s Chicago Business, the Chicago Tribune, National Public Radio, NBC and WGN.  As an accomplished vocalist, she serves within the Archdiocese of Chicago as a liturgical cantor.

DiTomas, MD, MS has worked for the California Correctional Healthcare Services since 2007 and is board-certified in both family medicine, hospice and palliative medicine. She is currently the statewide Chief Medical Executive over the Palliative Care Initiative which strives to provide high quality care to those with serious, life-limiting illness. As Hospice Medical Director she works with the hospice team at the California Medical Facility to create an environment where patients can live their final days with dignity, respect and comfort despite their incarceration.

Frish developed a practice of letter writing for others, which she does as a volunteer through various hospice-related organizations. She calls herself a “Letter Midwife” as she helps others nearing the end of their lives to express themselves. She is associated with Stanford Hospital and By the Bay Health.

The summit will also feature notable dementia care educator and advocate, Laura Wayman. Known as the Dementia Whisperer, Wayman wants to help improve the quality of life for those diagnosed with a cognitive impairment and help caregivers and families improve relationships and daily interactions with their loved ones living with brain change.

Rounding out the offerings, the summit will feature presentations from quality and compliance expert Carrie Cooley of Weatherbee Resources, Coalition for Compassionate Care of California CEO Jennifer Moore-Ballentine, and California Hospice and Palliative Care Association (CHAPCA) CEO Sheila Clark.

With four distinct learning tracks for caregivers, clinicians and administrators, The Quintessential Care Summit will be an engaging and exciting experience for healthcare professionals, students, and caregivers. Tickets are available at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/quintessential-care-summit-tickets-718125782547.