This site is associated with the National Council on Public History 2023 working group “Uniting Public History & End of Life Care,” which seeks to consider how public historians might more actively contribute to end of life care. The working group grows out of conversations launched at the 2022 meeting of the NCPH, at which Sara Jane Ruggles shared her experience working as a public historian for Auburn Crest Hospice in north Idaho. In the months since, a group of public historians—motivated by professional expertise, personal and family encounters at the intersection of public history and aging, and other observations and experiences prompted by developments in oral history, museum practice, and even virtual reality—have begun to gather for conversation among themselves and with geriatric caregivers, to share experiences and insight, read and learn about related work in adjacent fields (including gerontology, nursing, and health sciences), and discuss ways that public history practice might support hospice and elder care work. Ultimately the Working Group seeks to build a foundation from which we can help more public historians bring their skills into the healthcare world.
Our Questions and Aims
1.
Bridging Disciplines
How do we begin laying groundwork for interdisciplinary collaboration among public historians and healthcare workers? What is already happening in healthcare spaces, and what do public historians need to learn to join those conversations?
2.
Advocating for Change
How do we define the work we are attempting to do and make the case for its importance, to public historians and healthcare workers alike? Put another way, what contribution(s) might public history have to make?
3.
Designing New Research
What scholarship currently exists and what research is being conducted to better understand how oral history, life review and reminiscence, and/or encounters with historic artifacts, spaces, or landscapes, improve cognitive and emotional health for people at the end of life?
4.
Sharing Findings
What are the most productive ways to gather and disseminate research findings in order to move forward?
Learn More …
The buttons below lead to more information about this group and our work. “Case Statements” are features of NCPH Working Groups, in which each member contributes an initial statement about the questions and aims that bring them to the gathering; they are a great point of entry into this larger conversation. Now that NCPH 2023 has concluded, we will continue our online discussion and contemplation via a series of blog posts and other kinds of writings that individually and collectively seek to advance this important conversation.
Uniting Public History and End of Life Care 
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