Living with Grief Teleconference at UAB

UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) Hospice is the local Birmingham host for the seventh annual National Bereavement Teleconference from the Hospice Foundation of America. The topic is “Living with Grief: Children, Adolescents and Loss”.

April 19, 2000

BIRMINGHAM, AL — UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) Hospice is the local Birmingham host for the seventh annual National Bereavement Teleconference from the Hospice Foundation of America. The topic is “Living with Grief: Children, Adolescents and Loss”.

The live-via-satellite video teleconference, originating in Washington, will take place Wednesday, April 26 from 12:30 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the Bevill Building auditorium, 845 19th Street South. It is free and open to the public.

The national teleconference will focus on ways to help children and adolescents cope with loss, grief and bereavement. The program will offer insight and practical suggestions for those assisting young people with issues that include death, serious illness, divorce and other traumatic incidents.

Cokie Roberts of ABC News is the national moderator for the conference. She will be joined by a panel of prominent experts in the field.

Roberts will moderate the two-and-one-half-hour panel discussion. The panel will include Nancy Boyd Webb, DSW, BCD, RPT-S, a social worker and expert on play therapy for bereaved children; Charles Corr, Ph.D., professor and author who has written extensively on children, adolescents, and grief; Kenneth J. Doka, Ph.D., Lutheran minister and professor of gerontology at the College of New Rochelle; Margarita Suarez, RN, PNP, MA, a pediatric nurse, former school teacher, and Executive Director of AVANTA in Washington state. Dottie Ward-Wimmer, a pediatric nurse and children’s bereavement counselor with the Wendt Center for Loss and Healing in Washington, D.C., and Sheila Holt, a counselor with the D.C. Public School System will join the panel for a discussion on intervention.

The teleconference is produced by Hospice Foundation of America, a non-profit organization that assists those who cope either personally or professionally with terminal illness and the process of death, grief and bereavement. The teleconference is sponsored by Service Corporation International, with additional support from Project on Death in America. Last year’s teleconference was seen by more than 150,000 people in over 2,400 communities.