Former Emory University Department of Women's Studies Distinguished Fellow and U.S. First Lady Rosalynn Carter has entered hospice care at her home, the Carter Center announced in a statement on Friday. The statement, which the Carter Center posted on behalf of her son, former state Sen. Jason Carter (D-42), said that Rosalynn Carter and her husband, former U.S. President and Emory University Distinguished Professor Jimmy Carter, “are spending time with each other and their family.”
The Carter Center has not shared additional details on her physical state.
“The Carter family continues to ask for privacy and remains grateful for the outpouring of love and support,” Jason Carter wrote in the statement.
The Carter Center announced in May that Rosalynn Carter had been diagnosed with dementia.
Jimmy Carter also entered hospice care in February after a series of short hospital stays. The former president was treated at Emory’s Winship Cancer Institute in 2015 for metastatic melanoma that had spread to his liver and brain. He later suffered several other injuries, including a broken hip and a pelvic fracture after falling multiple times in 2019. Jimmy Carter developed a subdural hematoma as a result of those falls in November 2019 and underwent surgery to relieve pressure on his brain at Emory University Hospital.
Rosalynn Carter, who is 96, and Jimmy Carter, 99, are the longest-married presidential couple, having marked their 77th wedding anniversary in July. The former president told his mother he wanted to marry Rosalynn Carter after coming home from their first date.
Jimmy Carter began his term as president in 1977. In December of that year, TimeMagazine wrote that “Rosalynn Carter may well turn out to be an active presidential wife in the mold of Eleanor Roosevelt, her heroine.”
Rosalynn Carter went on to become the first in her position to work out of her own office in the White House East Wing with her own set of staff and initiatives. The former first lady “raised eyebrows in Washington power circles,” according to The Washington Post.
In her time as first lady, Rosalynn Carter sat in on Cabinet meetings and major briefings. She frequently represented the chief executive at ceremonial occasions and served as the president’s personal emissary to Latin American countries. Her main focus was removing social stigma about mental health and improving treatment.
In the decades after her husband left office, Rosalynn Carter continued her advocacy for mental health. Both Rosalynn and Jimmy Carter received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1999. The Carter Center, founded by the couple in 1982, has been a long-time partner of Emory, working to advance health and human rights. Rosalynn Carter served as vice chair of the Carter Center’s Board of Trustees from 1994 to 2005. She also established the Carter Center’s Mental Health Task Force and led the Carter Center Mental Health Program, which collaborates with the Rollins School of Public Health, Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing and Emory’s psychology and psychiatry departments.
