Bristol Hospice has unveiled a new pediatric program dedicated to serving children with life-limiting illnesses and their families.

A pilot of the Little Lights Pediatric Hospice program began in Hawaii and was unveiled on Tuesday. Bristol Hospice has plans to expand the new services in coming months across undisclosed locations.

Launching a pediatric hospice service was an important endeavor to better address a widely underserved patient population, according to Bristol Hospice CEO Alex Mauricio. But the initiative comes with careful consideration beyond examining clinical capacity, reimbursement and staffing needs, he said.

“This was truly placed on my heart, and I approached our board, who were so enthused by it,” Mauricio told Hospice News. “It’s that recognition of just how pure and amazing children are and that [we’ve] felt really led and called on to contribute back to this population. If you’re feeling compelled to serve in this pediatric space, don’t go into it narrowly. Be open and willing to learn and seek as much information as you can from those who have done it.”

Launched in 2006, Salt Lake City, Utah-headquartered Bristol Hospice provides care across roughly 80 locations in 25 states. The hospice provider is a portfolio company of the private equity firm Webster Equity Partners. Bristol offers adult and pediatric hospice, a dementia program, sleep assistance services, durable medical equipment and bereavement care, among other services.

Bristol’s new Little Lights Pediatric Hospice offers individualized pain and symptom management alongside curative treatments, as well as respite and emotional, spiritual and grief support. Additional services include therapeutic play and memory-making activities, as well as family support through social work services, spiritual care, bereavement counseling and 24/7 access to care teams.

The new program is provided in hospitals and other care settings, as well as in the home. Little Lights Pediatric Hospice team includes child life specialists, pediatric nurses, medical directors, social workers and chaplains.

The pediatric hospice program is designed to provide holistic, family-centered care and help address the unique needs of terminally ill children. Comfort kits are provided to pediatric patients that include lavender-scented warming bears, nighttime lanterns and journals, among other items. Also available are parent kits with tea sets, pens and journals.

Interdisciplinary teams at Bristol Hospice’s Hawaii reached out to the company’s leadership after recognizing an important unmet need for stronger pediatric end-of-life support in communities across the state, according to Mauricio. The decision to launch a new program in this region was led with a deep sense of community connectedness and understanding of the youth-specific population, he stated.

“Hawaii is our most tenured and successful programs not purely from growth, but they’ve actually been one of our best from a quality, compliance and leadership standpoint,” Mauricio said. “There was no better place to start this program because [of] that commitment to community — that infrastructure just means something different there.”

Bristol Hospice has plans to expand the program in the near future through a sustainable approach to growth, Mauricio stated.

Market research is an incredibly important part of its strategic expansion such as examining local community needs, leadership, referral partners, clinical and nonclinical staffing resources.

The pediatric hospice program took more than a year to conceptualize in Hawaii and involved “countless conversations” with local hospitals, health systems, pediatric physicians and nurses, vendors, as well as community leaders, Mauricio said.

“We have had so many people raising their hands since we’ve announced this new program,” Mauricio told Hospice News. “But if you think this is the right direction, then you absolutely need to make sure that you and your team understand the need and what that means. That execution is critical because it’s such a huge responsibility to make sure that you’re walking hand-in-hand on somebody’s end-of-life journey. Make sure that you can jump in and execute at the highest level. You need to understand from every angle what you are getting into.”