A grant to Summa Health System and the Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine and Pharmacy will study how to move palliative care services from the hospital and into homes.

The two institutions are getting one of 11 grants totaling $1.5 million from the American Cancer Society and National Palliative Care Research Center (NPCRC). Summa researchers, who will do the study, get $154,000 in grants for two years to look at patients in Ohio’s PASSPORT program, which provides long-term care for Medicaid-eligible patients.

“This population of patients by definition have a lot of needs, a great disease and symptom burden, and a high mortality rate over time,” Dr. Steven Radwany, Summa’s medical director of hospice and palliative care who is one of the investigators in the study. “What can we do to improve their quality life, help with advanced planning and support them spiritually and emotionally?”

Radwany said they’ll enroll patients with congestive lung failure, cancer, stroke and kidney failure, among other ailments.

The grants from the American Cancer Society and the National Palliative Care Research Center are meant to fund research that can be later advanced by federal agencies, which the organizations think have not made palliative care a priority, according to a press release. Summa and NEOUCOM are one of two grants funded by the research center — the other going to Harvard Medical School, according to the release.

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