Experts & Educators
We are a hub for the country’s most distinguished hospice and grief experts, researchers, and professionals. HFA experts help to inform and educate on a wide range of timely and relevant topics essential to best practice.
Our HFA educators are well known and widely recognized as experts in their fields.
They’re researchers with decades of knowledge backed by evidenced-based studies.
They’re professionals who have honed their skills with years of patient and family care.
HFA has been privileged to include many notable experts in its professional education offerings over the past 30 years, including the late Earl. A Grollman; Nancy Hogan, RN, PhD; Karla Holloway, PhD; the late William M. Lamers, MD; the late Richard E. Payne, MD.
Below is a complete listing of our presenters and authors from 2020 onward. We are grateful for their willingness to share their expertise to advance hospice and bereavement care through HFA.
HFA’s 2025 Living with Grief® program highlights interventive, creative, and adjunct evidence-based strategies used to assist dying patients and their intimate networks find meaning, value, and comfort. End-of-life care providers from across the country will share insights into programs such as pet therapy, art and music therapy, and the use of virtual reality, which improve the dying experience, offering patients and their networks enhanced quality care, an improved perception of care, and the amelioration of grief. Hospice providers, in turn, may benefit from satisfied clients, recognition in their communities, and enhanced staff morale.
Expert Presenters
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Oscar Widales-Benitez is a bilingual (English/Spanish) licensed psychologist and a Nationally Certified School Psychologist. He has specialized in providing culturally responsive, evidence-based services for traumatized and bereaved youth. He currently serves as a Senior Clinical Implementation Specialist at the Trauma and Grief center where his works centers on training and advocacy. Oscar’s clinical interests include…
Siobhan Aaron is an Assistant Professor at the Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University and an inpatient palliative care nurse practitioner. Her clinical expertise includes hospice, end-of-life care, and grief interventions. Dr. Aaron’s research focuses on health disparities in palliative care, culturally centered grief interventions, and improving patient-provider communication about…
Kimberly Acquaviva is both Founding Faculty at George Washington University’s School of Nursing and the first non-nurse to receive tenure there. As a social worker teaching within the school, Dr. Acquaviva’s research and scholarship are interdisciplinary and collaborative. Dr. Acquaviva is nationally known as an innovator and authority on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and/or…
Charmayne Adams is an assistant professor and coordinator of the Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Her clinical background focuses on working with individuals with a history of trauma or in crisis, including traumatic loss. Her research focuses on teaching about trauma, stress response and coping, systemic and emotion-focused…
Patti Anewalt is founder and previous director of the Pathways Center for Grief & Loss with Hospice & Community Care. The focus of her clinical practice, writing and teaching is on issues related to end of life, grief, compassion fatigue and crisis response, presenting at the national, state and local level. Anewalt is a Fellow…
Carrie Arnold obtained a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Psychology, a Master of Education (Counselling), both from the University of Western Ontario, and a PhD (Psychology) from Saybrook University. She is a Certified Canadian Counsellor with the Canadian Counselling and Psychotherapy Association, is registered with the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers…
Author of The New York Times bestseller Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End, Alua Arthur is the most visible death doula in America today. She is a recovering attorney and the founder of Going with Grace, a death doula training and end-of-life planning organization. Her TED Talk titled,…
Amber Ash is a pediatric hospice and palliative care social worker and co-chair of the Trauma Informed Care Committee at Hospice of the Western Reserve in Cleveland, Ohio. She also has experience providing end-of-life care to adults and has served as a clinical supervisor. Amber has served as a field educator for social work students at…
Christina Axelrod has been a Music Therapist for Hospice of the Western Reserve for 12 years and stepped into the role of Internship Director in 2015. Christina graduated from State University of New Paltz in 2007 and is currently enrolled in the Clinical Mental Health program at Cleveland State for her counseling license. In 2021,…
Meggie Beaudoin-Kobb is the staff chaplain for the Emergency Department at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. She is the co-chair elect of the HUP Diversity & Inclusion Core Council and has pioneered a number of initiatives throughout Penn Medicine aimed at integration of and better care for patients with disabilities. In addition, she…
Jacquelyn Benson is an Associate Professor of Medicine in the Division of Palliative Medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. Benson is a family gerontologist whose program of research has a translation focus aimed at enhancing the psychological and social lives of older adults and their caregiving families. Much of…
Kathleen Benton is the CEO at Hospice Savannah, Inc. She is heavily involved in the region through volunteer advisory board roles and professorships at Armstrong State University and the Mercer University Medical School. Dr. Benton has a master’s degree in medical ethics and a doctorate in public health. She has authored and reviewed many publications…
Whether you’re a patient, family member, or a friend trying to determine whether hospice is the right choice, HFA is here. We provide guidance before, during, and after the important decisions are made.
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