Henry Fersko-Weiss

Henry Fersko-Weiss is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, who in 2003, created the first end of life doula program in the United States at a hospice in New York City. That program, which adapted approaches from the work of birth doulas, focused on helping a dying person and family prepare for the end of life, working alongside them in the last days, and supporting them in their early grief.

Following the publication of an extensive front-page article on Henry’s work in the New York Times in 2006, he began teaching the end of life doula approach publicly. In 2015, along with Meredith Lawida and Janie Rakow, Henry cofounded the International End of Life Doula Association (INELDA) to bring his model of end-of-life doula care to organizations, co

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Kelly Ruby Hanson is a Mental Health Coach, Sacred Passage Death Doula, and Human Design Practitioner who helps people manage the complex emotions that arise during difficult experiences. After facing many deaths in her work as a surgical technologist at the hospital and then losing her mom, Kelly realized that she needed a different set of skills and tools to better support the losses she experienced. Kelly learned that to have a better dying experience, people needed more than the traditional medicine could offer.
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