News
ICEOL Welcomes New Deputy Director
Jeanne Sheils Twohig took up the post of deputy director for the Duke Institute on Care at the End of Life this January. She joins the Institute, based at Duke Divinity School, having moved from Missoula, Mont., where she served as deputy director for Promoting Excellence in End-of-Life Care , a national office of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. At Duke, she will oversee the development of strategic initiatives that foster the Institute's mission of creating and applying knowledge in the care of those at life's end.
Institute Director Richard Payne recruited Twohig for her background in health care administration and her expertise in palliative care delivery systems.
"Jeanne has been deeply involved in numerous excellent programs to improve end-of-life care and other forms of health care - including in underserved populations," Payne said. "Her knowledge and experience make her a perfect fit for this position, and we are delighted that she had joined this unique effort."
Twohig began her career in health care in 1973 as a community development consultant for Montana's Comprehensive Health Planning system and later co-founded a corporation specializing in rural health care delivery. She was instrumental in establishing Montana's first Medicaid Home and Community-Based Waiver Program for the Elderly, and she led a large home-care agency.
In the early 1990s, Twohig's passion for caring for vulnerable and underserved populations prompted her to spearhead development of a community health center for the uninsured in Missoula. Through a successful collaboration of city and county government, local hospitals, physicians, dentists and therapists, Partnership Health Center was created with Twohig as its founding executive director. In 1997 she was invited to be deputy director of Promoting Excellence, an initiative that funded more than 30 innovative projects across the country designed to improve care for patients with advanced illness and successfully leveraged change in end-of-life care policy and practice.
Twohig has provided leadership nationally in developing models for delivering palliative care, with a particular emphasis on special populations. She has written articles and monographs, including Financial Implications of Promoting Excellence in End of Life Care and Living and Dying Well with Cancer: Successfully Integrating Palliative Care and Cancer Treatment . She recently co-authored a chapter for the "Oxford Textbook of Palliative Nursing, 2 nd edition".
A graduate of Emmanuel College in Boston, Ma., Twohig received her masters degree in public administration from the University of Montana. She has two daughters.
To read about Payne's appointment as Institute director in 2004, see the Institute news story at: http://www.iceol.duke.edu/news/PayneHireFeb04.htm
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