Join us for an event to bring together the The Dinner Party community and its allies in Washington D.C. to celebrate the release of Renegade Grief: A Guide to The Wild Ride of Life After Loss by Carla Fernandez. Join Carla in conversation with Joyal Mulheron, Founder and Executive Director of Evermore and K Scarry, Founder of Creative Impact Studio and Giggle Water. This event will have a brief reading, a lively discussion on the importance of community care in times of loss, and a chance to connect with fellow grievers in Washington, DC. Join us in bringing together The Dinner Party community and its allies, past, present and future. This event will be located at Giggle Water, 1333 P St NW, Washington, DC 20005 Can’t make the event? Purchase a copy of Renegade Grief here. ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– From grief quests to altar-making, to dinner parties to Dungeons & Dragons, Renegade Grief is a profound and vulnerable exploration of care practices and rituals that empower grievers in a culture that expects us to simply “give it time.” Shaped by her own experience with the death of her father and her time cofounding The Dinner Party, a leading peer-support organization for people who’ve experienced a major loss, Carla Fernandez pushes back […]

In 2023, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), a little-known federal agency, was Congressionally directed during FY23 to establish an evidence base for what constitutes high-quality bereavement and grief care. As a result, AHRQ commissioned a systematic review, which was informed by an independent subject matter experts panel, to assess the feasibility of developing consensus-based quality standards for high-quality grief and bereavement care. In June 2024, AHRQ, in partnership with the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), hosted the expert panel of academics, federal policy officials, and leaders from local and national non-profits in Rockville, Maryland. The panel discussed the draft systematic report (which was also available for public comment) reviewing interventions to improve the care of bereaved persons, including “evaluations of screening approaches, diagnostic accuracy studies, grief interventions, and treatment of grief disorder studies reporting on an intervention and concurrent control group or comparator intervention” (Executive Summary). Literature searches identified 8,301 articles, 3,497 of which were obtained as full text, but only 166 met the eligibility criteria to be considered in the report. Feedback from the experts and public will be incorporated into a final report anticipated to be released in the Fall of 2024 (i.e., […]

Bereavement — the death of someone meaningful in our lives — is increasingly a direct concern for millions of people. Given the concurrency of mortality epidemics – homicide, overdose, suicide, maternal mortality, and traffic fatalities – grief and bereavement are an everyday reality for every neighborhood in America. In addition to the immense personal tragedy people experience, bereavement is a problem with vast health, economic, and social consequences. To address these consequences, Evermore is accelerating lasting societal change using data and science to drive policy and practice advancements that are grounded by the lived experiences of individuals and families. Unbeknownst to most people, bereavement is a significant risk factor for poor health and premature death. It also impacts economic opportunity, redirecting life trajectories downward, and has major spillover effects at every stage of life. Bereavement, for example, is associated with academic failings, substance misuse, teen pregnancy, incarceration, suicide attempts, suicide, and premature death — and a host of other public concerns. Evermore is working with communities across the nation to increase bereavement awareness, education, and community-based policy actions. To create a more livable world for all bereaved people, we are working with:  Child Care Providers Death investigators/Coroners Domestic & Homeless […]