Westbrook Gift Benefits Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life

 

DURHAM, N.C. -- Hugh A. Westbrook, co-founder and CEO of VITAS Healthcare Corp. of Miami, and his wife, Carole Shields Westbrook, have given $3 million to Duke University's Divinity School to enhance the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life, Duke President Nannerl O. Keohane announced Thursday.

 

Westbrook, a 1970 Divinity School graduate and pioneer in hospice care, had previously helped arrange $13.5 million in gifts to launch the institute in 2000. The institute works to improve research, education and practice in the care of those near death.

 

"Hugh and Carole envisioned, and now continue to support, interdisciplinary study at Duke Divinity School that will benefit humanity," Keohane said. "Such scholarship is at the center of what we do at Duke, and our community is grateful to Hugh and Carole for all they and VITAS have done to foster it."

 

Of the recent gift, $2 million will be supplemented by $1 million from Duke's Nicholas Faculty Leadership Initiative to endow a distinguished professorship to be filled by a new institute director. This will be the Esther Colliflower chair, named for the VITAS co-founder who also has played a critical role in hospice development.

 

The remaining $1 million will pay for a portion of a $22 million Divinity School addition, which is currently under construction and will include a suite of offices for the institute.

 

The institute is the first academic entity in the country to bring together a broad spectrum of disciplines, schools and professions to study how best to care, as a community, for those in the last stage of life. It involves physicians and nurses at Duke Medical Center, theologians and ethicists from the Divinity School, humanities scholars from Duke's arts and sciences departments, pastors and other caregivers from across the nation, and social work faculty from the nearby University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, among others.

 

Activities include academic research and teaching; practical training for health-care providers, pastors and other caregivers; and providing information and educational programs for the wider public.

 

"I'm struck by the fact that Duke Divinity School, with the support of [Duke Divinity School] Dean [L. Gregory] Jones and President Keohane, is so willing to take on the hard work of the institute and work with other schools at Duke and the UNC School of Social Work," Hugh Westbrook said. "It takes a lot of institutional courage and risk-taking to do that. Knowing they have that kind of commitment inspires us to want to go ahead and get all of the resources we can together to create the critical mass that is needed by the institute to achieve its mission."

Jones said the Westbrooks' donation would strengthen an already successful program. Among other efforts, the institute has organized major conferences on access to end-of-life care as well as care for terminally ill children and end-of-life care in the African-American and Jewish communities. Adding a distinguished chair for a new director and creating new, specially designed offices will greatly contribute to the program's effectiveness, Jones said

 

"These gifts will continue to develop our leadership in reconnecting faith communities and effective health care, and it will enhance our commitment to joining together research, teaching and outreach in the wider community," Jones said. "We are grateful for Hugh and Carole's extraordinary vision, passion and commitment to the Divinity School, and especially to improving the quality of care for persons at the end of life and their families."

 

In earning his master's degree at Duke Divinity School, Westbrook specialized in ethics and pastoral care. For the next 10 years, he served as a pastor in North Carolina and Florida and worked as a hospital chaplain caring for terminally ill patients and their families. In 1978, he and Colliflower founded VITAS, which provides hospice care to approximately 50,000 patients and bereavement services to more than 125,000 people annually across the nation.

 

Westbrook said the Duke institute should become a model for end-of-life care.

 

"When you look around the United States, there is not another institute of an interdisciplinary nature that goes beyond one narrow way of looking at care at the end of life," he said. "This interschool program housed in an academy like Duke University presents a great opportunity, and this is something that I hope will be imitated. It needs to be duplicated in other settings, because we need to do a much better job of training people like clergy and social workers and nurses to be advocates for people who are dying and their families.

 

"The institute also presents a great opportunity to work across disciplines and with other academic institutions to continue to work to expand access to hospice to the African-American community and other traditionally underserved groups," Westbrook concluded.