Dear readers,
We hope that this New Year brings happiness, peace and health to you and your loved ones.
Some of the issues we focused on – and will continue to do so during 2017 – are summarized below:
Our advocacy strategy, led by Dr. Katherine Pettus, the IAHPC Advocacy Officer, in collaboration with colleagues from other palliative care organizations and human rights organizations, has had positive results generating awareness about access to essential medicines.
As part of the advocacy strategy we also increased our activities in social media. The IAHPC Facebook page registers more than 2,600 likes and the IAHPC Twitter account has almost 3,000 followers. We also recently started an IAHPC LinkedIn page. These are exciting times that offer new opportunities for collaboration, networking and support. Visit and ‘like’ our pages and follow us on Twitter to keep connected and learn how you can help and participate!
As in the past, we will continue to help the development of palliative care, education, research and practice around the world. This year, we will be supporting the 15th World Congress of the European Association for Palliative Care, in Madrid, Spain, the 12th Conference of the Asia Pacific Hospice Network in Singapore and the 5th International Public Health and Palliative Care Conference in Ottawa, Canada. As in previous years, we will be awarding IAHPC Traveling Scholarships to these conferences to help support the travel of palliative care workers who wish to attend and participate. If you are interested in applying for a Traveling Scholarship and are not an IAHPC member you can join, or renew your membership, here. January 15 is the deadline to submit applications for scholarships to the EAPC World Congress – see the Resources and Announcements page of this Newsletter for more information and instructions on how to apply – take advantage of this opportunity!
In 2016, we completed the second phase of the Opioid Price Watch, a project to monitor and report the dispensing price of opioids around the world. This project is as a component of the agreement of work as a non-governmental organization (NGO) in formal relations with the World Health Organization (WHO) and is funded with grants from the US Cancer Pain Relief Committee and Atlantic Philanthropies. A paper summarizing the findings was recently published in the Journal of Palliative Medicine.
In 2016, we re-launched Pallipedia, a free online palliative care dictionary built under the auspices of IAHPC. The dictionary is housed in http://pallipedia.org/
Pallipedia offers to visitors the option to search for a term or concept related to the field of palliative care. The searching capability includes stop words and query language. Its quality is ensured through a set of criteria that has to be met in order for a term to be uploaded. The dictionary offers only definitions based on articles in peer-reviewed journals or chapters in textbooks, or resulting from sound consensus-based processes, or from institutional websites. We are extremely grateful to Dr. Roberto Wenk, Past Chair of IAHPC and Senior Editor of Pallipedia, for his hard work in making this revision possible.
The end of the year also marked the expiration of IAHPC membership for many of you. Individuals and institutions whose membership is about to expire should have received reminders by mail. If your membership has expired please remember to renew it. Membership benefits include full online access to palliative care journals, the ability to participate in research projects and the possibility of applying for financial support to advance your palliative care knowledge and skills. In addition, membership dues are very important to IAHPC as they help us to continue our mission to help others.
In 2016, we joined Global Giving to raise funds for the IAHPC Traveling Scholarships program. Through this campaign we raised more than $10,000 from October to December. And during the month of December we received many donations from individuals who gave funds to IAHPC in memory of a friend or loved one as a gesture of gratitude for the care that they received from hospice and palliative care providers. Many thanks for your encouragement, support, and help. These donations are very important to IAHPC as they are a reflection of how much impact we are really having at the level that matters most – patients and families.
We appreciate the confidence that all of our donors, members and readers have placed in us and in our work. We will strive to be better each day and look forward to working with you in 2017.
Until next month,
Liliana De Lima, MHA
Executive Director
Lukas Radbruch, MD
Chair, Board of Directors
This newsletter, including (but not limited to) all written material, images, photos are protected under international copyright laws and are property of the IAHPC. You may share the IAHPC newsletter preserving the original design, the IAHPC logo, and the link to the IAHPC website, but you are not allowed to reproduce, modify, or republish any material without prior written permission from the IAHPC.