The experience of dying has changed over the past several decades, with many more people enduring prolonged deaths as a consequence of chronic, progressive disease. Needless suffering-physical, emotional, existential, and spiritual-too often accompanies these deaths, for both dying persons and survivors.

The mission of the Project on Death in America is to understand and transform the culture and experience of dying and bereavement through initiatives in research, scholarship, the humanities, and the arts, and to foster innovations in the provision of care, public education, professional education, and public policy.

In November 1994, George Soros delivered a speech on the questions raised by the culture of dying in America. His speech, reproduced here, elaborated much of the origins and aims of the Open Society Institute's Project on Death in America.

The end of 2000 marked the close of the Project on Death in America's second three-year funding period. The accomplishments of these six years are a credit to the hard work of PDIA's small, energetic staff and the highly integrative, participatory Advisory Board, whose members possess a range of expertise in the complex issues surrounding the care of the dying. In light of the progress in improving the care of the dying the Open Society Institute committed $15 million to PDIA to continue its work for another three-year period.

Since its inception in July 1994 , the Project on Death in America - Grants Programs have provided funding for innovative approaches to understanding and changing the process of dying and bereavement. To learn more about our past funding click here.

PDIA has focused its efforts on several major initiatives while maintaining a commitment to health care professional education and training. To learn about our current funding initiatives, click here.

To encourage broader philanthropic support in the field of palliative care, PDIA joined with a series of foundations to create Grantmakers Concerned with Care at the End of Life (GCCEL). This initiative is working to expand funding coalitions in end-of-life care and serves as a resource to foundations about opportunities for supporting end-of-life care. Currently, GCCEL is placing major emphasis on targeting new audiences as potential supporters, bridging diverse interests of grantmakers in order to include end of life in their funding priorities, forming corporate partnerships, and promoting end-of-life care activities by providing examples of successful projects and recommendations for worthwhile initiatives to interested grantmaking bodies.

For an alphabetical listing of all PDIA's grantees since 1994, click here.

Project on Death in America
Open Society Institute
400 West 59th Street
New York, NY 10019
212-548-1334