The National Alliance for Care at Home: What's in a Name? or What's Not in a Name?

This article offers a critical reflection on the symbolic implications of the name that has been chosen to represent the new organization resulting from the merger of the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) and the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization (NHPCO). That new organization is now called the National Alliance for Care at Home. The primary goals of this article are to educate, support, and advocate for home care, hospice care, and palliative care, and to illustrate how the new name for the National Alliance fails to do so. This reflection comes from a person who has enjoyed a long career of almost 50 years in studying, teaching, and writing about hospice and palliative care, as a volunteer with multiple hospice organizations, and in serving for the past 20 years as Senior Editor of NHPCO's (now the Alliance's) Pediatric e-Journal.