Ann Armstrong-Dailey oral history transcript.

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OH154-S02-i01

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Title

Ann Armstrong-Dailey oral history transcript.

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  • 2019 (Creation)

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Biographical history

Ms. Ann Armstrong-Dailey, founder of Children’s Hospice International, has devoted a lifetime of service to creating policy protections and ensuring that all ill children may have access to palliative services as they need them. Ms. Armstrong-Dailey was born in San Francisco in 1940 and experienced the loss of her parents and a sibling through war and illness. When Ms. Armstrong-Dailey lost her brother at sea in 1969 during the Vietnam conflict, she found she had no support from healthcare or policy. This drove her to seek action and investigate thanatology globally. Ms. Armstrong-Dailey then began to travel abroad seeking ideas and successful models of palliative care for dying children; however she was met with provider resistance and closed doors. She then formed the Children’s Hospice International organization “out of sheer, unadulterated anger” so that there would at least be someone starting the policy work around patient and family advocacy for palliative services. Ms. Armstrong-Dailey describes her most important impact on the field of pediatric palliative care to be in awareness of the issue that children could have better care when critically ill. Ms. Armstrong-Dailey is still actively improving access to services for children with life-threatening conditions with Children’s Hospice International.

Scope and content

Ms. Ann Armstrong-Dailey begins her interview by describing some early pivotal moments in her life that led her to a career advocating for palliative care. She first describes the memory of her and her mother fleeing kamikaze pilots and German submarines in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and how that was a formative moment in understanding the processing power and tenacity of children. She then describes the circumstances of her brother’s death and the lack of support she received as a transformational moment that empowered her to “audaciously” seek out the global leaders of the world and ask them ‘why isn’t there support for dying children?’ Ms. Armstrong-Dailey then recalls two stories of children that were dying in a hospital and were blocked from receiving hospice care but were desperate to connect and support their parents and families as they died. She describes the momentous effect those deaths had on her and the urgency she felt to find a way to support better family communication and policy protections in pediatric healthcare.

Ms. Armstrong-Dailey tells how she built a supportive network of international collaborators who wanted to do better for dying children. She also describes instances where she rallied with this network to push ideas, legislation, literature, and healthcare models. Ms. Armstrong-Dailey describes some of her work exploring and dismantling some of the resistance she felt by providers and families with education and quantitative research. She concludes the interview by describing her dream of working herself out of business by integrating palliative care seamlessly into standard medical operating procedures. She also advocates for the continuation of investigations on how healthcare can perform better in communication with patients, families, and each other.

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Preferred Citation: Item description, Reference Code, Bernard Becker Medical Library Archives, Washington University in St. Louis.

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