We are pleased to announce that The Action Mill's submission to the Health Care Experience Design End-of-Life Care Challenge was named Best Solution Focusing on Advanced Directives. (The Action Mill is the design consulting firm that created and runs the Death & Design project.)

Our submission, A Gift of Grace, is a set of cards with prompting questions, activities, and phrases to help people comprehend the complex issues involved in end-of-life care, and determine their own specific preferences for that care. We designed A Gift of Grace to tap into existing social networks by providing a way for people to honor a loved one who is living with a terminal illness or is in hospice care, and for families or other tight-knit groups to have conversations about their wishes but also share and reaffirm the activities that make them feel most alive. Watch a detailed explanation of A Gift of Grace in our video entry below.

An entry video for the Catalyzing Communication about End-of-Life Care design challenge. http://healthcareexperiencedesign.com/eolc/ Created by The Action Mill and Dr. Karl Ahlswede.

The Action Mill team benefitted immensely from the deep knowledge of advanced care planning provided by Dr. Karl Ahlswede, who joined us in designing A Gift of Grace. Dr. Ahlswede is a former surgeon and one of the first to be given the specialty board certification in Hospice and Palliative Medicine. He provides unique services for advanced care planning based on a custom approach to establishing patient values, which we drew on heavily to design A Gift of Grace.

Update: Since we won the End-of-Life Care Challenge, we've run a Kickstarter campaign to create this product. Check out mygiftofgrace.com to find out more.

We'll be featuring the other winners of the End-of-Life Care Challenge on Death & Design in coming weeks. To view the other winners of the challenge, and all the submissions, click here.