Effectively Engaging the Faith-Based African-American Community in Advance Care Planning (FR433)

•Discuss the formation and operation of the Alameda County Care Alliance Advanced Illness Care (ACCA) Programs in the faith-based African-American community.•Discuss the evolution of the ACCA programs and evaluation for broad community impact.•Review ACCA strategies, milestones and outcomes toward increasing awareness of advance care planning in the African American community. Only 1/3 of all Americans and 19% of African-American adults over age 65 have documented their end-of-life care wishes. Similar disparities exist in discussion of values and preferences for end-of-life care, sharing of wishes for health care providers and family and formal completion of advance directives. To address these disparities and increase awareness of advanced care planning (ACP), the Alameda County Care Alliance (ACCA) has engaged fourteen denominationally diverse churches, their congregants and pastors using a faith-based community-based participatory approach to: 1) provide lay care navigation support to persons needing advanced illness care and their families/caregivers to meet spiritual, advance care planning, health, social, and caregiving needs; 2) better understand the usability and acceptance of existing ACP tools and develop a culturally acceptable ACP toolkit for use in the community; 3) host annual events to increase awareness of ACP on or around National Health Care Decision Day and to recognize the important role of caregivers; 4) train pastors and care navigators to support ACP in the community; and 5) assess annually completion of ACP milestones among church congregations and associated community centers. Over the last 2 years, ACCA has helped over 2,200 persons needing care and caregivers. In the first year, care navigators identified and made more than 1000 referrals to local resources, successfully addressing 80% of participants’ stated needs. Through discussion, use of case examples, findings from community events, and ACP evaluation data, this workshop will present practical information on how to effectively engage the faith-based African-American community in ACP, inform ACP communications preferences, and better understand attitudes and values around lifesaving treatment options and ACP activities.