Person-centered care is a dynamic process that facilitates individualized emotional, social, physical and spiritual support with the person. The support and care provided is based on the person's needs, values, aspirations and preferences.

Person-centered care promotes well-being through continuation of self and normality and the experience of living a life of enjoyment, comfort, belonging, purpose and meaning.

Person-centered care is based on humanistic values and the fundamental premise that every person has a unique history, strengths, interests, and needs and has the right to self-determination in how to go about living his/her own life.

Unpublished definition developed by the Dementia Action Alliance Research Group (February 2014)

The person is the center of care: the whole person bringing with them all the attributes that identify them as an individual.

The person is surrounded by two interlocking heart shapes signifying the close partnership between the person and caregivers and the inclusion and attachment one for the other to provide and receive the kind of care which continually recognizes the personhood of the other.

The hands represent the team of individuals working collaboratively as a foundation to support the person in all ways; mind, body, and spirit. The hands provide comfort and work in meaningful and purposeful ways to promote, and sustain personhood throughout the lifespan, despite physical or mental frailty.

The Institute for Person-Centered Care (IPCC) at the University at Buffalo is a community-university cross-disciplinary research center that supports and promotes understanding of the means to sustainable systemic transformation of cultures within and between institutional and community eldercare providers based on person-centered care (PCC) values.