Robert Woods Johnson Foundation, Last Acts & Last Acts Partnership

The Robert Woods Johnson Foundation ("RWJF") has been involved in all sorts of end-of-life initiatives, funding projects over many years. They want the public to think that they are solely focused on "improving health care" and being a benefit to the community. But if we look closely at what they are funding and what projects they have thrown their weight behind, we get a different picture. The direction of their contributions is aimed at changing how Americans think about dying and changing how Americans die. That doesn't just mean promoting greater acceptance of hospice and palliative care, as they would like the public to think. It means really changing society from a sanctity of life culture to a quality of life culture.

Lifetree's Timeline lists the three pronged strategy used by Last Acts:

Daniel Callahan's 3 bullet points, modified slightly by an Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommendation, became the strategy for Last Acts Objectives and included:

- change American death-denying culture to death-accepting culture;

- normalize withholding/withdrawing nutrition & hydration;

- provide avenue for hastening death by use of opioids.

Soros [Project on Death in America] PDIA scholars were principal investigators for many of the RWJF-funded projects.