Online Seminars on Grief Literacy - Seminar 6: Grief Literacy-Approaches to engaging the broader community, Kathie Supiano, Salt Lake City, VS
The purpose of this series of online seminars is to bring the concept of Grief Literacy to life by highlighting its various aspects and broad impact. There are seven one-hour seminars planned with international leaders in the field of Grief Literacy research and practice between September 2024 and March 2025. Each seminar will involve 30 minutes of presentation followed by 30 minutes of questions and dialogue. This seminar on 20 February 2025 is the sixth seminar.
Seminar 6: Grief Literacy-Approaches to engaging the broader community
The lecture will address development and implementation of a year-long State-funded program to promote grief literacy across the State of Utah, targeting persons most impacted by the pandemic; older adults, indigenous persons, Veterans, rural communities—and their overlapping constituencies. Innovative were the grassroots strategies used for mutual empowerment of community members to reframe and address individual and collective loss. Lessons learned include education of mental health providers/health providers, first responders, religious communities, and the engagement of citizen groups. Also reflections about outcomes are part of this lecture.
Speaker: Dr. Supiano’s research is in clinical interventions in complicated and prolonged grief, and the grief of those who are bereaved by suicide or overdose death and the grief of incarcerated persons. She has been a practicing clinical social worker and psychotherapist for over 40 years. Her clinical practice has included care of older adults with depression and multiple chronic health concerns, dementia family caregiver support , end-of life care, and bereavement care.
Registration
Attendance at this seminar is free. After registration the zoom link will be sent to you a few days before the seminar.
More information and registration for other seminars go to the overview below.
Background Series of online Seminars on Grief Literacy
Grief and loss are fundamentally human experiences, touching on a very universal and existential layer of life. Yet there is great embarrassment in societies around this topic. Grief Literacy is a concept coined in 2020 by a sub-group of the International Workgroup for Death Dying Bereavement (IWGDDB). Grief Literacy is: a) The capacity to access, process, and use knowledge regarding the experience of loss. b) This capacity is multidimensional: it comprises knowledge to facilitate understanding and reflection, skills to enable action, and values to inspire compassion and care. c) These dimensions connect and integrate via the interdependence of individuals within socio-cultural contexts (Breen et al., 2020). The transformative value of the concept consists in making visible the extent to which current societies or cultures avoid grief and helping us to formulate new strategies to address it. Specifically, it addresses a lack of appropriate compassionate responses to people in mourning.
The purpose of this series of online seminars is to bring the concept of Grief Literacy to life by highlighting its various aspects and broad impact. We hope this series will contribute to a greater awareness and sensitivity of how people respond to their own grief or the grief of others, and will lead to an increase in the compassionate support of ordinary people among themselves.
Information
There are seven one-hour seminars planned with international leaders in the field of Grief Literacy research and practice between September 2024 and March 2025. Each seminar will involve 30 minutes of presentation followed by 30 minutes of questions and dialogue. The seminars will be held online and are intended for a broad audience, including students, PhDs, staff, volunteers, citizens, and interested professionals/parties from (grief) networks or care institutions.Collaboration
Together we invest in a more grief literate society. This is a collaboration between the following universities, organisations and institutes:
- Informal care & Care ethics, University for Humanistic Studies, the Netherlands
- Compassionate Communities Centre of Expertise (COCO) at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
- Curtin University Perth, Australia
- Policy Science Unit, Kyoto University School of Medicine, Japan
- Agora, knowledge and development organization: social approach to palliative care, the Netherlands
- Department of Human Centered Design, Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands
- Pharos, Dutch Centre of Expertise on Health Disparities, Netherlands
- The Local Social Policy Unit for City and PCSW Bruges, Belgium
- Centre of Expertise Perspective in Health, Avans University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands
- Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
- School of Social Work, Renison University College, affiliated with the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
- Department of Social Work and Social Administration, Faculty of Social Sciences, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China
- Caring connections: A Hope and Comfort in Grief Program. University of Utah College of Nursing
| Topic | Speaker | Date |
| Seminar 1 | Lauren Breen Curtin University Australia | 24 SEPTEMBER 2024 2 PM CET |
| Seminar 2 | Mary Ellen Macdonald Halifax, Canada | 15 OCTOBER 2024 2 PM CET |
| Seminar 3 | Susan Cadell Ontario, Canada | 19 NOVEMBER 2024 2 PM CET |
| Seminar 4 | Carl Becker School of Medicine Kyoto University Japan | 4 DECEMBER 2024 2 PM CET |
| Seminar 5 Grief Literacy, societal impact (this information will be available soon) | Bianca Neumann-Morris UK | 14 of JANUARY 2025 2 PM CET |
| Seminar 6 Grief Literacy & Caring Connections | Kathie Supiano Salt Lake City, VS | 20 February 2025 4 PM CET |
| Seminar 7 Measuring and Quantifying Grief Literacy: Towards a Grief Literacy Index | Yong Hao Ng Hong Kong | 25 MARCH 2025 10 CET |
| Contactpersoon | Anne Goossensen |
| Locatie | online |
| griefliteracy@uvh.nl | |
| Datum | 20-2-2025 |
| Openingstijden | 4PM CET |