Jeannine English, President of AARP, Joins the Board of Directors at Zen Hospice Project, San Francisco

SAN FRANCISCO, April 12, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Zen Hospice Project (ZHP) today announced the election of Jeannine English, President of AARP, to its Board of Directors. The appointment, confirmed by Board president, Gary Heidenreich, underscores the San Francisco-based organization's increasingly high profile advocacy efforts to expand access to human-centered end-of-life care.

English, a member of the AARP Board of Directors since 2010, was previously President of AARP California and chair of the AARP National Policy Council. She was also a founding partner of a government relations and legislative advocacy firm in California and has been AARP President since June 2014.

"We are pleased to have Jeannine's considerable expertise and influence on our Board," says Heidenreich. "With her finger on the pulse of the nation's Baby Boomer population, and a decade's worth of experience effecting consumer-centric change on a legislative level, Jeannine's insights will be invaluable to our advocacy and educational efforts as we work to make human-centered end-of-life care more widely available in California and across the nation."

 "Zen Hospice Project does extraordinary work delivering a compassionate and humanistic model of care that delivers both economic and quality of life benefits," says English. "As a longtime advocate for equal rights and consumer choice, I look forward to working with ZHP to expand its clinical and social impact on end-of-life care." 

Issues surrounding end-of-life care options and economics are gaining urgency as roughly 10,000 Americans turn 65 every day for the next 15 years. ZHP's relevance to this fact is found in the more than three million viewings of a 2015 TED Talk delivered by ZHP's Senior Director and Advocate, BJ Miller MD, on end-of-life care and in the successful expansion of the organization's roster of educational programs in mindful caregiving, both of which speak to the rapidly growing interest in and need for more compassionate healthcare options.

ABOUT ZEN HOSPICE PROJECT, www.zenhospice.org
The Zen Hospice Project changes the experience of dying by creating space for living. Based on contemplative traditions and its nearly three decades of hands-on experience, ZHP's mindful caregiving model is the foundation of its work, delivered in its own residential hospice and through institutional partnerships, and is the basis of its educational programs serving clinicians, professional and informal caregivers, and administrators nationwide. Zen Hospice Project is based in San Francisco and is a 501c3 organization.

SOURCE Zen Hospice Project