The national campaign to promote National Healthcare Decisions Day on April 16 proved to be a success, according to Nathan Kottkamp, founder and chairman of NHDD.

“Our participation numbers took a nice step up, but it was our activity level that saw a huge jump,” Kottkamp said in a statement posted on the NHDD website.

NASW once again joined in the annual campaign that encourages adults with decision-making capacity to engage in advance care planning.

Hundreds of organizations, health care providers and other key stakeholders used the day to promote awareness, completion and discussion of advance directives.

Kottkamp said more than 1,262,440 medical staff members, employees, or organization members received either specific education on advance directives or received some sort of reminder about NHDD.

“Over 3,504 advance directive documents were known to be executed — and that is with the vast majority of events expressly not focused on completing documents on the spot,” Kottkamp said.

New this year was a push to utilize social media. Kottkamp said preliminary data revealed that more than 2 million people were exposed to NHDD messages via such networks as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Learn more about the campaign and National Healthcare Decisions Day resources.

In other hospice and palliative care advocacy efforts, registration is open to receive the Hospice Foundation of America’s 18th annual Living with Grief educational program, Spirituality and End-of-Life Care on DVD. NASW once again supported the program. HFA is also adding to this year’s series by offering three bonus webinars on the theme.

In addition, HFA announced it has a Hospice Care and Resources section. The website includes multiple resources for practitioners as well as clients and family interested in learning more about hospice care.