Volume 23, Number 7: July 2022
Apply for an Advocacy Award to Expand Your Palliative Care Service
The IAHPC Advocacy and Partnership Development Program (APAD) is designed to financially support palliative care organizations and institutions aspiring to build capacity and constructive partnerships to improve policies, leading to better service provision in their own countries or districts. In short, the goal is to advance palliative care.
The award involves mentoring by the IAHPC for two years, $1,000 US in the first year, and up to $1,500 US in the second year. The deadline to apply is August 30, 2022.
Applicants must present a short project proposal focusing on how they will build institutional capacity to facilitate constructive relationships with all relevant actors, including government and media representatives, with the goal of improving access to services for people with palliative care needs.
Project proposals may relate to advocacy at specified levels of governance for:
- improved access to, and availability and affordability of, essential palliative care medicines in the public sector of the health system;
- inclusion of palliative care in clinical education curricula;
- inclusion of marginalized populations in service planning, implementation, and program monitoring; and/or
- policy and budget development for palliative care services.
Among the criteria, grantees must prepare quarterly progress reports. Preference is given to organizations that represent palliative care workers, patients, and caregivers, and to institutions in low- and middle-income countries.
For more information about the NAP program, to receive a link to the program application or a list of the required materials, please contact Debra Pledger-Fonte, Coordinator of Membership Benefits.
Meet the IAHPC Scholars Chosen to Attend the APCA Conference
Congratulations to the IAHPC Scholars selected to attend the 7th International African Palliative Care Association Conference taking place from August 24-26, 2022.
Meet the winners:
Rose Gahire Kankindi, from Kigali, is executive-director of the Palliative Care Association of Rwanda, which she cofounded in 2008. Clearly no stranger to multi-tasking and undeterred by the unknown, at the same time Rose was working as the country’s first program manager for AIDSHealthCare Foundation, a job she took on after establishing the Rwanda chapter of the Society for Women and AIDS in Africa.
Rose expects that the conference will give her additional tools to further her advocacy for palliative care during humanitarian crises and as an integral part of universal health coverage. As someone living with a noncommunicable disease, she has “skin in the game” when it comes to her role as a national and international champion in the fight against cancer and NCDs.
Coumba Gueye is a palliative care doctor at the Jolio Curie Institute in Dakar, Senegal. While the hospital has included palliative care for cancer care for a few years, “the lack of policy is limiting the activity. I would like to have more knowledge and strategies in palliative care policies, and the conference is a good opportunity to learn from the more experienced practitioners providing care in Africa or in other countries.”
Coumba has shown an interest in palliative care virtually from the start of her medical career, earning a certificate of palliative care training in 2014 from Hospice Africa Uganda just a few years after graduating, then continuing with graduate studies in gerontology from a university in Pennsylvania, USA, and a second certificate in palliative care from Harvard Medical School in 2019.
Chris Mindiera from Lilongwe, Malawi, has a five-page CV packed with general clinical and palliative care experience on top of his BSc and Master’s of Philosophy in palliative care. His roles have included: facility manager, clinical officer, technical adviser, mentor, lecturer, and program designer. Major tasks have included program delivery, health system strengthening, and quality improvement—and he has worked both with the Ministry of Health and non-governmental organizations.
What is driving him to attend the conference?
Chris wants to improve overall palliative care by sharing up-to-date, evidence-based best practices with nursing and medical students as well as members of the Palliative Care Association of Malawi. He also plans to fundraise for donations for medical supplies for palliative care facilities, and gather information about the importance of access to morphine in palliative care to advocate with policy makers.
Tonny Abdul Mwabury, MD, palliative clinical advisor to the Najojo Better Living Missions Association in Teya Teyaneng, is pushing for change throughout Lesotho. His conference goal is to learn how to identify the country’s palliative care knowledge gap, and acquire strategies to press educational leaders for upgraded or new curricula and courses.
Tonny also wants to learn how to assess the firmness of intentions of national health policies and regulations to relieve pain and support palliative care services. “I hope to gain more knowledge on how to advocate for the availability and the use of palliative care medicines in the country” and ways to help promote policies that favour their access at all levels of care. Lastly, he intends to learn to develop strategies to examine funding models for provision of palliative care services at both the community and national levels.
Undertreated and untreated pain combined with a high symptom burden for those with cancer propelled Tonia Onyeka to become an anesthesiologist specializing in pain management and palliative care. She is currently head of the Pain & Palliative Care Unit at the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital in Enugu, Nigeria, and a professor at the university’s College of Medicine.
“In this part of the world,” she says, “pain management and palliative care are inseparable. […] I’m excited to be a palliative care physician because I see the specialty bringing hope to the ‘hopeless.’”At the conference, Tonia intends to establish research collaborations and “foster collaborations between my institution and other institutions on the African continent and beyond.” All the knowledge garnered will be used to improve clinical skills in her unit, but she also intends to organize a clinical meeting to educate all staff as well as write a report to the director of oncology and chief medical director to help draw the practice of palliative care forward, “positioning it as a pacesetter in excellent clinical care of palliative care patients and their families, in my region of Nigeria in particular and in the entire Nigerian nation.”
Esther Taaka, a palliative care nurse at Mbale Regional Referral Hospital in Uganda for nearly 11 years, clearly loves to learn. She training and worked as a midwife, then earned a diploma in palliative care, added a palliative care leadership certificate and, most recently, earned a certificate in palliative care specific to the pandemic.
Esther sees a huge benefit to adding palliative care to primary care. “Integration of palliative care services into an already existing health care delivery system will help the institution use the human resource work force that is already in the system, as they will be able to deliver the same services at the same pay and the health workers will be able to care for the clients holistically.” The conference, she says, will further this goal.
The conference is cohosted by the African Palliative Care Association and the Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance, and is co-sponsored by the IAHPC, ICPCN, Global Partners in Care and PallCHASE.
Reminder
Application Deadlines Looming for Scholarships to Conferences in the Americas
The deadline is July 15 to apply for one of 10 IAHPC scholarships for full virtual access to the McGill International Palliative Care Congress taking place October 18 to 21, 2022, in Montreal, Canada.
The extended deadline is August 31 to apply for one of 10 IAHPC Scholarships for the Latin American Palliative Care Congress taking place November 9 to 12, 2022, in San José, Costa Rica.
Apply online (scroll to the bottom of the page, then click on “Apply for an IAHPC Scholarship Program”). You must be, or become, an IAHPC member in order to apply. Memberships start at $20 US for individuals living in low-income countries.
Scholarship applicants can come from any discipline, and it can be a wonderful opportunity for YOU!
Pallipedia Racks Up Biggest Numbers Yet
IAHPC’s online palliative care dictionary, Pallipedia, has more users now than at any other time in its 10-year history: it was accessed 73,873 times in the month of June alone and consistently draws more than 86,000 pageviews monthly.
Pallipedia is often the top Google listing for searches involving palliative care terms, partly thanks to the fact that the Internet search engine optimizes the site’s search functions as a contribution to the importance of this open-access resource developed and maintained by the IAHPC.
Pallipedia was built and is updated on a strictly volunteer basis by Dr. Roberto Wenk, using trusted sources that provide timely information on palliative care treatments, symptoms, medicines and their doses, and much, much more. There are currently 1,394 terms and 1,765 definitions.
Three new definitions have been recently added:
- narcotic bowel syndrome (NBS),
- opioid-induced bowel dysfunction (OIBD), and
- palliative care referral criteria.
Tidbits (news in brief)
Advocacy Course Module 6 in Progress
“How to Prepare and Present an Evidence-Based Policy Brief” is the topic of the next module of the ongoing IAHPC Advocacy Course, free to members. IAHPC Senior Advocacy and Partnerships Director Katherine Pettus is in the process of preparing Module 6, which is expected to be released in a couple of months. For a taste of the course, take advantage of free access to the introduction, Basic: Advocating for Palliative Care in the Multilateral System. To access all modules, join IAHPC!
Toolkits for Global Events
The Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance has released its toolkit for participants in World Hospice & Palliative Care Day on October 8, 2022. It comprises a campaign toolkit in English or Spanish, a fundraising toolkit, logos and social media graphics, templates for advocacy letter and press release, Twibbons, and filming techniques. The theme of this year’s event is: Healing Hearts and Communities. Check out a video on launching a community event.
International Children’s Palliative Care Network has a web page packed with materials for your participation in the 2022 edition of Hats On for Children’s Palliative Care, October 14. There is a toolkit, stickers, templates for an advocacy letter and press release, tips on fundraising and filming, and social media tools for multiple platforms. If you register your event, it will be put on ICPCN’s world map.
Health Policy Chapter Review
Dr. M.R. Rajagopal has reviewed a chapter on “Health Policy” written by IAHPC Director of Advocacy and Partnerships Katherine Pettus and Pati Dzotsenidze in the recently published Oxford Textbook of Public Health Palliative Care. The review states that the chapter “deserves close study.” Keep an eye on the IAHPC Newsletter for an upcoming review of the textbook.
Quotable
“One of my mentors in palliative care says, ‘You cannot keep patients in the hospital forever. One cannot manage terminal illnesses and the dying stages of illnesses as an exclusively medical issue.’ […] The burden of health care expenditure is a matter of grave concern to India, where millions still remain below the poverty line, with not even a full day's meal to survive. Even then most families refuse to take up palliative care and resort to expensive and painful—but fruitless—drugs and procedures.”
—From IAHPC Board Member Dr. Chitra Venkatesaran’s excellent, 16-minute Tedx talk, How Palliative Care Can Change the Way We Practice Medicine.
The Right to Palliative Care
IAHPC Research Advisor Dr. Tania Pastrana has contributed “Derecho a los cuidados paliativos” [Right to palliative care] in the 2020 publication edited by Sandra Huenchuan, Visión multidisciplinaria de los derechos humanos de las personas mayores [Multidisciplinary vision of the human rights of the older persons] (LC/MEX/TS.2022/4) (pp. 135-148) published by the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.
A Home Visit
The work of IAHPC Board Member Dr. Nahla Gafer is highlighted in a blog post by author and photographer Imogen Thurbon titled, Solace: Bringing Palliative Care to the Home, on the website Women’s Literacy in Sudan. Thurbon accompanied “Sudan’s leading specialist in palliative care” on a home visit to a 90-year-old martriarch in the last stages of cancer.
Mark the Date! A webinar on “Comparative Models in Palliative Care: Perspectives from Africa, Asia, and the Americas,” airing August 25, is free of charge to anyone who registers for The Global Palliative Care and Pain Relief Research Hub, a webinar series co-sponsored by IAHPC.
What’s New in the Calendar
Australia
ANZSPM 2022 Biennial Conference: Better Care for All: Inclusivity, Equity and Collaboration. Virtual and in person. September 1- 4, 2022, Canberra.
WPPCAN Workshop: Providing Relief of Serious Health-Related Suffering Due to Breathlessness in the Person with Life-Limiting Illness: A review of current best practices. Virtual. July 21, 2022.
Canada
2022 World Congress on Pain. In person. September 19-23, 2022, Toronto, Ontario.
UBC Division of Palliative Care CME Day 2022. Virtual conference. October 28, 2022.
Singapore
Self-Medication to a Child by Parents in Paediatric Palliative Care: Can we justify this? Virtual webinar. July 12, 2022.
UK
Behaviour That Challenges Us. In-person workshop. July 12, 2022, London.
St. Christopher’s Young Change-Makers. In-person course. July 18-22, 2022, London.
Care of Wounds in Palliative Care. In-person workshop. July 19, 2022, London.
Principles and Practice of Palliative and End-of-Life Care for Registered Nurses, Nursing Associates and Allied Health Professionals. In-person course. July 19-21, 2022, London.
USA
Intensive Review Course. In person. August 11-13, 2022, Louisville, Kentucky.
Updates in Hospice & Palliative Medicine Intensive Physician Board Review Course. Virtual. September 20-22, 2022.
25th Supportive & Palliative Care Clinical and Research Symposium. Virtual. September 23-24, 2022.
Memory Bridge summer series: Dementia and the Meaning of Life. Webinars, Wednesdays from July 13-Aug. 3.
Access all items in the IAHPC Calendar of Events.
Promote your education and training events in the IAHPC Global Directory of Educational Programs in Palliative Care. It’s quick and easy — just submit your content online.