Programs

Five Wishes

Your Right.
Our Mission.

Aging with Dignity’s Five Wishes program is the most popular advance care planning resource in the U.S. Five Wishes is user-friendly, easy to understand, legally valid in all fifty states, and available in 32 languages plus Braille.
An individual copy costs the same as 25 years ago – just $5.

1. 2 M
FW Distributed in 2024
43 M
Distributed to Date
15 K
Healthcare professionals trained in 2024
5200
Distributing Organizations in 2024

See for Yourself

How It Works

Wish

1

My Healthcare Advocate
Choose the person you trust most to make legal healthcare decisions and carry out your wishes when you can’t do so yourself.
Wish

2

My Treatment Wishes
Outline in your own words the medical treatments you want or don’t want if you become seriously ill.
Wish

3

How Comfortable I Want to Be
Express how you want to be kept comfortable so your caregivers can help you feel at ease.
Wish

4

How I Want People to Treat Me
Share how you wish to be treated to ensure you have your dignity respected.
Wish

5

What I Want My Loved Ones to Know
Tell your loved ones what they should know about you and how you want to be remembered.

Who We Support

Families

Over 43 million Americans have used Five Wishes to find peace for themselves and their families as their time approaches.


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Communities

Five Wishes has helped thousands of businesses, organizations, and faith groups support members of their community in their time of need.

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Clinicians

America's healers and caretakers rely on Five Wishes to understand their patients' wishes and provide the best possible care.

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Finishing Life
Faithfully

The New Companion Guide for Catholics

America’s 60 million Catholics want to follow the moral teachings of the Catholic Church on end-of-life care but often don’t know what they are. “Finishing Life Faithfully” is a companion guide for Five Wishes that offers clear guidance on how to follow the moral teachings of the Catholic Church when making important healthcare decisions.

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Praise for Five Wishes

“I know no aging advocacy group more effective than Aging with Dignity. Their work is rooted in the God-given dignity of each person and love for the elderly and their families. I urge your support.”

Arthur Brooks, best-selling author

“I helped a patient fill out Five Wishes in the ICU and it was a great experience that left him in tears and on the phone with a brother he hadn’t talked to recently. Amazing!”

Marian Grant, palliative care nurse practitioner, Washington, D.C.

"Both Finishing Life Faithfully and Five Wishes deserve to be widely known and broadly distributed. Together, these publications allow anyone to express, in simple terms, how they would like to be cared for."

Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, Archbishop of New York

“I’ve been a fan of your work for years…Thank you for all you do.  Thank you for all you and the Five Wishes organization have done.  And I look forward to what you’ll do for us as family caregivers in the future.”

Gary Edward Barg, Founder and Editor-in-Chief, Today’s Caregiver magazine.

“I use Five Wishes along with other materials in my course when we are discussing advance directives, power of attorney and end of life care... because it is straightforward and short. It has been part of the program for ten years.”

William Hunt, MD, FAAFP, Clinical Professor of Family Medicine, University of California, Riverside.