Honoring Choices- Massachusetts
Advance Care Planning Matters
Advance care planning makes sure your voice guides your care — especially if you can’t speak for yourself. It helps you clarify what matters most, reduces stress during a medical crisis, and gives your family clear direction instead of hard guesses.
Planning ahead isn’t just for older adults or serious illness. Every adult, starting at 18, has the right to choose a trusted decision-maker and write down their wishes.
Below are links to the Honoring Choices advance care planning process and free, multilingual tools to help individuals, families, providers, and communities start these conversations.
The Statewide Cross-Continuum Partners are working together to expand access to clear, consistent information across Massachusetts — so every adult can document their wishes and receive care that reflects what matters most.
Getting Started
Start a simple conversation with a person you trust to be your Health Care Agent and complete a Health Care Proxy and handy wallet card and Personal Directive (Living Will).
Next Steps
Build on your conversations with your doctors and care teams to manage chronic illness and live well with serious illness. Update and add to you plan with MA planning document.
Supported Care Choices
All adults over age 18 can choose a trusted person to help make their personal care plan. Our tool kit ca accomodate adults with a range of decisions- making and communication skills.
Your Health Care. Your Choice!
Planning ahead is not about fear—it is about clarity, dignity, and peace of mind.
When adults take time to name a Health Care Agent, write down what matters to them, and talk openly with their providers and loved ones, care changes. It becomes more personal, more respectful, and more aligned with individual values.
Through the Who’s Your Agent?® process and Ambassador training, thousands of conversations are happening across Massachusetts—in homes, clinics, hospitals, community centers, and faith communities. These conversations reduce confusion during medical crises, ease the emotional burden on families, and help clinicians deliver care that reflects a person’s goals, not just their diagnosis.
By providing multilingual tools, simple step-by-step guidance, and trained community leaders, we are normalizing care planning as a routine part of adult life—not something reserved for serious illness or the end of life.
- Increased Completion of Planning Documents
- Stronger Communication Between Patients & Providers
- Reduced Crisis-Driven Decisions
- More Equitable Access to Planning
- Empowered Individuals & Families
- Workforce & Community Capacity Building
Your Health Care. Your Choice!
Health care planning is for everyone. Starting at age 18, every adult can choose a trusted Health Care Agent, document care preferences, and create a personal care plan that guides family and care teams. The Who’s Your Agent?® Program offers simple, step-by-step toolkits to help you start the conversation, complete Massachusetts planning documents, and update your plan over time.
Making a plan protects you, supports your loved ones, and helps ensure you receive care that reflects what matters most to you—today and throughout your lifetime.
Join individuals, families, care professionals, and community organizations across Massachusetts in celebrating the power of personal health care planning. From March through June, communities host events, share conversations, and use free tools to help people take control of their future health care decisions. You can co-host an event, access ready-to-use resources, and post your event on the Spring Celebration calendar.
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Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts is an Honoring Choices Statewide Cross-Continuum Partner. We collaborate to help standardize accurate, reliable health care planning information and improve equal access to free downloadable multilingual planning documents and tools. Honoring Choices MA supports HCA’s mission and works on joint projects to support your members, staff and community.
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Become a Health Care Planning Ambassador
Health Care Planning Ambassadors
are trained to confidently engage adults in meaningful care planning conversations — from simple early discussions to complex serious illness conversations. Through the Honoring Choices MA Ambassador training, interprofessional care team members and community professionals learn how to use the structured Who’s Your Agent?® process and toolkits to guide adults in creating a personal care plan. Ambassadors help individuals document their care goals, priorities, and preferences so they can receive care that reflects what matters most — today and throughout their lifetime.
More than 7,000 Ambassadors across Massachusetts are already incorporating this proven planning process into daily workflows, clinical practice, education, and community programs. Participants complete an interactive virtual training and receive a Health Care Planning Ambassador Certificate. Beyond strengthening communication skills, Ambassadors also contribute valuable insight into the barriers adults face in accessing care — helping advance more equitable, culturally responsive health care across the Commonwealth.
Who’s Your Agent?
Who’s Your Agent? is a simple, three-step approach to health care planning that helps adults document and communicate their care preferences.
Starting at age 18, every adult can make their own health care decisions—and write those decisions down. A good place to begin is by completing a
Health Care Proxy (to name someone you trust to make decisions if you cannot) and a
Personal Directive (Living Will) to outline what matters most to you.
The process is straightforward:
- Choose a Health Care Agent and complete a Health Care Proxy.
- Write down your care preferences in a Personal Directive (Living Will).
- Talk about your wishes with your health care providers and loved ones so your plan can guide care now and in the future.
If you’re not ready to name a Health Care Agent, you can still begin by completing a Personal Directive.
The free Getting Started Tool Kit includes multilingual Health Care Proxy forms (available in 15 languages), Personal Directive documents, wallet cards, conversation guides, and helpful fact sheets—making it easier for individuals and families to plan ahead with clarity and confidence.
The Resources page has everything you need to make a plan for good care over your lifetime. It includes:
- Video: The Health Care Planning Process
– Your roadmap to good care. Available in multiple languages. - Three Tool Kits:
- Massachusetts Planning Documents:
- Statewide Cross Continuum Partners
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Conversation Guides Series for Consumers & Care Providers
- For Consumers:
- For Care Providers:
- MA Health Care Planning Process Handout
- HCMÂ Guardianship, Conservatorship and AlternativesÂ
- FAQs & Informational Fact Sheets
- Webinar Series for Professional Care Providers
- Community Based Palliative Care Providers Education & Resources