The 9th annual Palliative Care Summit, hosted by the Coalition for Compassionate Care of California (CCCC) and Children’s Hospice and Palliative Care Coalition, will feature as its keynote speaker Eric J. Cassell, M.D. Dr. Cassell is the author of The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine, considered by many to be the foundation of the palliative care movement.

Additional speakers include Jennifer Kent, director of the California Department of Health Care Services, and B.J. Miller, M.D., a hospice and palliative medicine physician at the UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, presenter of a 2015 TED Talk on palliative care.

The summit will take place March 13-14, 2017, at the Hyatt Regency Sacramento, and is designed for physicians, nurses, social workers, nursing home administrators, chaplains, patients and consumers who are interested in palliative care best practices, quality and policy.

Those interested in palliative care are also invited to submit poster proposals for presentation at the summit on March 13. The submission deadline is December 9, 2016.

If you register early, you can save up to 22 percent. Registration is $375 for CCCC members and $575 for nonmembers. For more information or to register go to www.ccccsummit.org.