• Carla S Alexander, Gregory Pappas, Anthony Amoroso, Mei Ching Lee, Yvonne Brown-Henley, Peter Memiah, Joseph F O'Neill, Olivia Dix, Robert R Redfield, and Members of the AIDSRelief Consortium of PEPFAR.
• Institute of Human Virology, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Electronic address: calexand@medicine.umaryland.edu.
• J Pain Symptom Manage. 2015 Sep 1; 50 (3): 350-61.

AbstractPalliative care (PC), introduced early in the management of chronic illness, improves patient outcomes. Early integration of a palliative approach for persons with HIV has been documented to be effective in identifying and managing patient-level concerns over the past decade in African settings. The experience of implementing PC in multiple African and other resource-constrained settings (RCSs) emphasizes the need for essential palliative competencies that can be integrated with chronic disease management for patients and their families facing life-limiting illness. This article is an historical description of how basic palliative competencies were observed to be acceptable for health workers providing outpatient HIV care and treatment during eight years of U.S. implementation of "care and support," a term coined to represent PC for persons living with HIV in RCS. The need for team building and interprofessional education is highlighted. The model is currently being tested in one U.S. city and may represent a mechanism for expanding the palliative approach into management of chronic disease. Such competencies may play a role in the development of the patient-centered medical home, a critical component of U.S. health care reform.Copyright © 2015 American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine. All rights reserved.

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