Partnerships Bust Palliative Care Advocacy Out of the Clinical Box

By Katherine I. Pettus
IAHPC Senior Director of Advocacy and Partnerships

When palliative care was first finding its advocacy feet, professionals created broad lateral alliances across countries and regions to push for public sector funding and accreditation of palliative care services and access to essential medicines. As the discipline matures, the international advocacy movement is strengthened through synergistic partnerships with other professional associations and civil society organizations that share some of our interests. Active participation over the long term in organized global networks, such as the Geneva Global Health Hub (G2H2) and the Vienna NGO Committee on Drugs (VNGOC), has provided me with opportunities to co-organize informational events to highlight those shared interests and promote a common policy agenda. After all, according to Ecclesiastes, “a cord of three strands is not easily broken.”

WHO Executive Board meets in February 

As a non-state actor in official relations with the World Health Organization, the IAHPC is invited to send a non-voting delegation to annual meetings of the Executive Board and World Health Assembly. I prepare advocacy notes on certain agenda items relating to palliative care for our members to present to their governments. Read my notes for the upcoming session on these agenda items: emergency and critical care, rare diseases, primary care, and health in emergencies.

IAHPC Board Members Dr. Natalie Greaves from Barbados, Dr. Sherin Paul from India, and Ms. Stella Rithara Mwari from Kenya will represent the IAHPC at the Executive Board meeting in February. Our delegates make short, prepared statements on the floor, addressing all the government representatives on the urgency of integrating palliative care into their national health policies. If you're interested in serving as a delegate, or joining our delegation for the World Health Assembly in May, contact me! 

Partnering with global surgery professionals

To prepare for the February meeting, G2H2 is hosting a series of policy debates beginning the week of January 19 to improve our understanding of the agenda and important issues. Read more about the debates in the link above.

The IAHPC is cohosting a free webinar on January 22, “From Resolution to Reality: Strengthening the WHO ECO Framework for Safe Surgery, Anesthesia, Critical Care, and Pediatric Care,” co-sponsored with the Global Surgery Foundation, the G4 Alliance, and the Society of Critical Care Medicine. Dr. Tania Pastrana, IAHPC’s research and education advisor, will present on the relevance of the Essential and Expanded Palliative Care Packages for Adults and Children when providing critical and surgical care. Register to the webinar.

Partnering across religions 

The global chaplaincy movement has expanded exponentially since the World Health Organization encoded spiritual care as an essential component of palliative care in Resolution 67/19. As a nondenominational, international organization with members of all faiths and the non-affiliated, the IAHPC will host an interfaith webinar on World Day of the Sick, February 11, 2026, to highlight religious leadership in palliative care in India, Belize, Rwanda, and Taiwan. Although Pope John Paul II established World Day of the Sick in 1992 as “a privileged moment of prayer, spiritual closeness, and reflection for the Church and for civil society,” and the hospice movement originated with monastic orders in medieval Europe, palliative care aligns with the ethics and practices of all contemporary world religions. 

Indeed, in his January 9 address to the Holy See Diplomatic Corps, Pope Leo XIV said, 

“Civil society and States have a responsibility to respond concretely to situations of vulnerability, offering solutions to human suffering, such as palliative care, and promoting policies of authentic solidarity, rather than encouraging deceptive forms of compassion, such as euthanasia.”

To build partnerships across faiths, the IAHPC is nurturing the development of a global interfaith palliative care network to host educational and inspirational events as well as to raise religious palliative care literacy where it is low or absent. We also hope to collaborate with the IAHPC research committee on this project. Please let me know if you would like to be involved.

New partnership at the CND

Last but not least, the IAHPC has applied for a hybrid side event at the March session of the 69th Commission on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna. The topic is “Ten Years Since the UNGASS Outcome Document: New tools to help member states fulfil their commitments on controlled medicines.” Dr. Lukas Radbruch, IAHPC's outgoing chair, will present the Essential and Expanded Palliative Care Packages for Adults and Children, a representative of the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) will present the Learning Program, and participants will learn about the recently published WHO Guideline on Balanced National Controlled Medicines Policies to ensure medical access and safety. 

The event is cosponsored by the government of the Kingdom of Belgium and the INCB, supported by the following civil society organizations in consultative status with ECOSOC: the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, Dianova International, the Knowmad Institut, Pallium India, Villa Maraini Foundation, the Vienna NGO Committee on Drugs, the Union for International Cancer Control, and the Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance. A broad array of allies to show support for our issue!

Stay tuned for more information and the registration link in an upcoming issue of Pallinews. If you are interested in joining IAHPC ‘s delegation for the CND in March, please let me know. We will be giving statements on the floor during the relevant plenary debates concerning the need to improve safe and rational access to palliative care medicines.