Make your legacy a better ending to a life story

Community Support and Education

Enriching lives and supporting loved ones is a key part of our mission. We collaborate with partners to better serve the entire community and offer affordable counseling for those facing the death of a loved one and those who are bereaved. Each year, we also educate thousands on end-of-life care, legacy-building, advance care planning, and grief.

Alive’s Grief Center presents a new model for healing. It is the only one in the region, and our donor-supported services are available to the entire community. Our counselors are specialists who know how to work with families, children, and individuals to discover resilience AND joy while grieving. Our unique model offers something for everyone: private counseling sessions, support groups, mindfulness training, and expressive arts therapy.

We are a trusted referral partner for local counselors and schools and have also been designated one of a few “Childhood Bereavement Changemakers” in the nation. There is still a huge unmet need for these services. One in eleven children in TN will experience the death of a sibling or parent before the age of 18.

We want to build on this incredible foundation in the following ways:

• Continue supporting all grieving community members, including those that cannot pay and those who are not affiliated with our patients
• Build out designated activity rooms in our Grief Center: a cushioned volcano room where kids can blow off steam safely, a diary room for journaling, an art-making room, and a community room.
• Expand “pre-bereavement” programs for caregivers and family members, so they can start receiving support as soon as a loved one receives a life limiting diagnosis
• Expand partnerships with local non-profits and care providers, bringing support and education to their communities (Gilda’s Club, Thistle Farms, Cumberland Heights, etc.)
• Expand community education on death and grief, including multi-cultural practices

“Grief support is uniquely important for anyone that loses someone close.” – Alive grief client

“My counselor at Alive is helping me live with grief in the healthiest and best way.” – Alive grief client

Great care starts with great teams. In order to provide the personalized, loving care that is the hallmark of our mission, we need the means to recruit and retain the best in an ever more competitive market. Our region is one of the largest healthcare employers in the country. If we can’t provide the salaries, benefits, and opportunities that others can, we won’t have the quality workforce we need. Investing in recruiting and retention will include:

• Competitive compensation packages
• Professional development and advancement opportunities
• Expanded development and implementation of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion policies and education to better serve our staff, patients, and the entire community.

“With Alive, we really get to care for the people… make them part of our own little family and treat them as we would want our own loved one’s cared for.” – Alive RN, Austin

“The Alive staff were so understanding, compassionate, helpful, and kind. It was just beautiful. For me, the peace of mind that came with having help with the medication was enormous.” – Florence Davis, wife of Buzz Davis, an Alive patient who was cared for in their home

“Most people think of hospice as a place people go to die. At Alive Hospice in Nashville, it’s where they go to live as well as possible until they die.” – WebMD

Technology to Support Personalized Care and Deeper Connections

Providing care during the pandemic opened our eyes to just how essential our Henry Hooker Alive Connect telehospice program is. Today, it is a secure video chat system that lets care teams see what is happening with patients immediately. It also lets patients have face-to-face check-ins with their social workers and chaplains. The next evolution of this technology will provide more efficient access to resources as well as deeper connections with our patients and families, further reducing isolation and stress.

A Digital Hub Where Loved Ones and Patients Can Access All of Our Resources:

Patients will be able to tap into wellness resources, visit with companions, record end-of-life instructions and final wishes, find answers to their questions, and access medical records.

Loved ones will be able to access daily patient updates, explore caregiving resources, do advance care planning, and take part in virtual counseling programs and support networks.
We also need technology upgrades to bring older systems up to date:

• New electronic medical record systems
• New accounting system
• Electronic document signatures and approvals
• Survey systems to measure and improve user experience

“This is the most impressed with care I have ever felt. I was completely blown away by it. Everybody at Alive was just top notch and very sensitive to us and our needs. My husband and I looked at each other after one day, and—this is the biggest compliment to Alive—we told each other, ‘You have my permission to bring me here.’”
– Pallie, daughter of an Alive patient

Updating and Expanding Residences and Community Spaces

Through prudent planning Alive now owns several properties: our 24/7 care residences in Murfreesboro and Nashville, our Nashville headquarters campus, and the Grief Center (also in Nashville).

Owning these buildings gives us an incredible opportunity to create space for the community and culture we are trying to build, within and without the organization.

As stewards of these properties, we need to maintain them and structure them to serve our mission in the best way possible.

Residential Improvements:

• Renovations and added rooms for more residents at our Murfreesboro residence (including roof repairs, upgraded security system, sanctuary upgrades)
• Courtyard beautification and memorial installations at our Nashville and Murfreesboro residences.
• Updating the much older Nashville residence to better meet the needs of families, patients, and staff (will include renovations to security, HVAC, family room, dining room, kitchen, and nursing stations)

Modernized Work Areas to Keep Teams Connected

• A restructure of our Nashville headquarters will support our recent move to a majority remote workforce.
• Properly equipped drop-in areas for remote teams
• Intentionally designed spaces to foster collaboration, transparency, and connectedness when remote teams come together

Spaces for Community:

• Develop our Nashville green space into a multi-use “park” (for gathering, workshops, memorials, etc) that can be used for our programs and shared with community partners
• Art signage to take advantage of our high traffic locations for branding and to add beauty for the community (eg: Charlotte, 18th St)

“The healing begins for the person and family when hospice comes in. Having skilled professionals attending to mom’s every need was humbling. But they were so good at it, they allowed us to relax and just be a family again, which is what we needed most.”
– Ivie Burns’ mother Evelene was cared for in our Murfreesboro residence.