Voicing My Choices

Voicing My Choices: A Planning Guide for Adolescents & Young Adults helps young people living with a serious illness to communicate their preferences to friends, family and caregivers.

When living with a serious illness there are often things in life that are out of your control. Voicing My Choices gives you a way to express something very important - your thoughts about how you want to be comforted, supported, treated, and remembered. Voicing My Choices was developed using feedback from young people living with a serious illness. It is based on the Five Wishes advance directive, which has been used by more than 18 million adults.

If you are age 18 or older and want your wishes to be legally binding, you should consider completing an advance directive, such as Five Wishes.

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Voicing My Choices was developed by researchers at the Pediatric Oncology Branch, National Cancer Institute and the National Institutes of Mental Health at the National Institutes of Health. The development process included extensive research using the Five Wishes advance directive and incorporating the feedback of adolescents and young adults. Special thanks to Lori Wiener, PhD, in addition to Sima Zadeh, MA; Haven Battles, PhD; Kristin Baird, MD; Elizabeth Ballard, MA; Janet Osherow, LICSW, and Maryland Pao, MD.

Pediatrics: "Allowing Adolescents and Young Adults to Plan Their End-of-Life Care"