N.C. Center for Creative Retirement to Host Health Care Forum

The N.C. Center for Creative Retirement will host a community forum on "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Health Care Decisions but Didn’t Know Who to Ask" at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 19, at UNC Asheville’s Owen Conference Center. The event is free and open to the public.

The forum will be lead by a notable panel, including Mission St. Joseph’s Values and Ethics Coordinator David Blackmon, attorney Cathie St. John-Ritzen, Cornelia Scibetta of Care Partners and Melissa Parker of LifeShare of the Carolinas. Ron Manheimer, N.C. Center for Creative Retirement director, will serve as moderator. The panelists will discuss advance care planning, living wills, health care and mental health power of attorney and organ, eye and tissue donation. A question-and-answer session will follow their talk. Handouts and materials will be available for participants.

The forum is offered as part of the annual National Health Care Decisions Week, sponsored by the American Bar Association, the American Medical Association and the Department of Health and Human Services’ Health Resource Services Administration.

The event is sponsored by the N.C. Center for Creative Retirement in partnership with LifeShare of the Carolinas, Pisgah Legal Services, Buncombe County Council on Aging, the Memory Assessment Clinic and the WNC Organ and Tissue Donation Initiative. Statewide sponsors are the N.C. Coalition on Donation, N.C. Bar Association’s Health Law Section and Carolinas Center for Hospice and End of Life Care.

For more information, call the N.C. Center for Creative Retirement at 828/251-6140.

Media Contacts:

• Ed Jenest, Event Coordinator, 828/296-9708
• Jill Yarnall, UNCA Public Information Assistant Director, 828/251-6526