Radio Bilingüe launches end-of-life campaign

For Immediate Release
Últimos Cuidados, a project of Radio Bilingüe
September 18, 2002

Radio Bilingüe has launched a major new campaign to promote hospice care among Latinos. Entitled Últimos Cuidados, the campaign will address a serious issue – care for people facing the end of life – in a series of sensitive yet engaging programs. Últimos Cuidados will use culturally-relevant news reports, talk shows, mini-dramas, educational messages, and other broadcasts to introduce Radio Bilingüe listeners to the range of hospice options available to them and their families. First-hand testimonials from hospice beneficiaries will play an important role in the campaign.

Hospice care is a relatively new phenomenon. Volunteers pioneered the field with the philosophy that the final months of life are a time for family, faith and personal reflection, not disruptive medical treatments that prolong life only briefly. Hospice teams of nurses, counselors, chaplains and volunteers work with patients and loved ones in their own homes, comforting them emotionally and spiritually as well as physically.

Hospice care has largely evaded Latinos, especially in poor rural communities. Medicare and Medi-Cal began supporting hospice care in the 1990s, greatly expanding access, yet news of hospice options for Latinos remains scarce. Now the hospice community is reaching out to Latinos, in partnership with Radio Bilingüe. Últimos Cuidados will not only bring Latinos into the hospice movement – it will infuse the hospice movement with the spirit of America’s growing Latino community in return.

Últimos Cuidados is produced by Radio Bilingüe in partnership with the California Hospice and Palliative Care Association. The series is funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and the Open Society Institute.

Radio Bilingüe is a non-profit radio broadcast network of Latino-oriented news and music, owned and operated by a Latino community-based organization. Recognized as National Latino Public Radio, the network serves the San Joaquin, Salinas and Imperial Valleys, and provides programming via satellite to 60 affiliate stations throughout the United States, Mexico and Puerto Rico.

Últimos Cuidados is the first series to be directed from Radio Bilingüe’s new bureau in Sacramento, California.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:
Marc Breindel (916) 441-3770 or marcb@radiobilingue.org

Radio Bilingüe can be heard online at www.radiobilingue.org.