2026 Tower Awards Lifetime Achievement Recipient: Karen Cassidy

Congratulations to our 2026 Lifetime Achievement Recipient Karen Cassidy! Karen Cassidy was tenured on the nursing faculty at both the University of Louisville and Bellarmine University, teaching Community Health Nursing for more than 25 years. It was when she served as a palliative care nurse practitioner at St. Mary and Elizabeth Hospital that she saw the gap in end-of-life care and those who were not able to access hospice care because they didn’t have a home or resources to pay for caregivers or family to provide the needed care when they were dying. She founded Hildegard House in 2014 and has served almost 400 residents since then.