We will be launching our IAHPC end-of-year fundraising campaign shortly, and are also participating in Giving Tuesday on 27 November 2018 — a national day of giving in the United States — and well as a Holiday Fundraising Campaign. These campaigns are described below. If you have any questions about either one, please contact Genevieve Napier at [email protected].
Optimal palliative care relies on health care workers keeping up-to-date with information, including evidence-based innovations in care and recent trends in patient treatments and outcomes. Unfortunately, most people in the field of palliative care in developing countries have no access to books and journals, as they are expensive, scarce, and difficult to obtain.
Your Donation Counts!
$25 = 1 person’s access for a year
$50 = 2 people’s access for a year
$75 = 3 people’s access for a year
$100 = 4 people’s access for a year
From January through September, IAHPC members conducted 3,169 searches and
downloaded 827 articles.
The IAHPC Library provides unlimited access to a large bank of palliative care journals and books for more than 1,000 members at no cost. But that doesn’t mean it costs nothing to maintain.
On its Giving Tuesday web page, IAHPC has set a fundraising goal of $20,000 to support the library, so that we can continue to provide timely, international evidence-based knowledge and make it freely accessible to members.
Reaching our goal will enable us to maintain and expand the IAHPC Library, and to cover more palliative care workers in developing countries. It provides members with access to an online library, book reviews, and palliative care journals. By allowing the download of an unlimited number of articles, the IAHPC Library stands alone as a resource for palliative care and hospice workers everywhere. The Library also supports Pallipedia, a public palliative care dictionary.
The Library gives online access to the CINAHL Database, which provides the full text of more than 1,300 journals dating back to 1937, more than 5.8 million records, indexing for nearly 5,500 journals, and searchable cited references for more than 1,500 journals.
Your donation helps assure that suffering by patients and family caregivers is relieved to the greatest extent possible.
By Richard Bauer, MM, BCC, LCSW
Nairobi, Kenya
Having access to the CINAHL Database through the IAHPC Library is absolutely critical and essential toward improving the quality, implementation, and integration of evidence-based practice into palliative care service provision in Kenya. Because I work in a large community-based organization, we do not have access to a library through an academic setting. We are able to “Google Scholar” various topics to improve our strategic planning and patient care, but so often access to those articles ranges from US$35 to US$55 for ONE article. This is simply not in the budget for us.
I am able to access the CINAHL Database several times each week to further grow in my particular research interests, as well as provide articles for other colleagues in our organization. Access to these articles improves our provision of care, serves as motivation to integrate research from our own experience, and helps develop abstracts and articles for publication in journals as well as presentations at key international conferences and symposia. Having access to the latest research and developments in the field of palliative care also means that senior clinical staff can develop new interventions and provide continuing education opportunities for staff at our organization as well as staff from the Ministry of Health.
Because I have this access, I’m not only able to download pertinent articles, but also now store these articles in Zotero to enable subsequent organization of key palliative care innovations.
By Karen Cox, MD
Maracas St Joseph, Trinidad and Tobago
I would like to write in support of access to CINAHL/Pallipedia and other IAHPC resources and publications for low income countries. Access to global research is crucial to influencing learning and service development in lesser developed countries.
While research findings are not always transferable, for countries where local research is not possible or infrastructure is lacking, international research often provides the only evidence for decision making. It can also spawn more culturally appropriate local research that can benefit the population.
In economically deprived settings, it is difficult for students and even professionals to have access to journals and databases.
While doing an online Masters degree in palliative medicine three years ago, I had wide access to databases through the university, but upon completion, found myself cut off from all this evidence. Membership in the IAHPC has enabled me to once again have access to this wealth of information, useful in my day-to-day practice in palliative care and in my teaching of palliative care to other specialties.
Thank you for embarking on this worthwhile campaign.
By Dr. Margie Venter
Stellenbosch, South Africa
I have only been a member of IAHPC for a short time but one of my main motivations for joining has been the access granted through membership of the IAHPC Library.
Ongoing learning in the field of palliative care is vital for me to be able to deliver the best possible quality care to my patients. In South Africa there are few practitioners doing palliative care. Ongoing CME’s in other fields, such as oncology, are often available as they are supported by pharma. The field of palliative care, however, is poorly supported financially, making the possibility of creating learning opportunities more difficult.
Affordable access to quality information, such as through the IAHPC Library, is therefore vital to ongoing education in palliative care in our medical community.
The IAHPC runs programs to support palliative care at all levels — local, regional, national, and international. This Christmas season, donors are urged to help further palliative care by choosing whatever fits their pocketbook and personal preference:
As an IAHPC member you can give a 2-year membership for someone in a low-income country (just $US30), lower-middle income country ($75), or middle-income country ($140). As our gift to you, your current IAHPC membership will extended for 6-months.
You will be contacted once the 6 month extension has been added to your membership.
Your donation of any amount goes toward global advocacy to recognize palliative care and pain treatment as a component of right to health, and to its inclusion in international and national health care policies and documents.
Put your gift toward training and education by supporting the travel of a palliative care worker to a richly educational event, where they can also establish an important network to help further palliative care in their home country. One full Traveling Scholarship is $US2,000; $1,000 helps fund their travel; $500 helps pay their registration fee.
A donation to this program provides financial and technical aid to groups and institutions in developing countries implementing strategies to improve and advance hospice and palliative care.
We are a small organization that allocates more than 80% of our budget to mission-driven programs, but someone needs to do the work! A contribution to the operating fund helps us continue our work.
We are pleased to announce that the IAHPC will fund 10 Traveling Scholarships to support palliative care workers who must travel to attend the 16th World Congress of the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC) in Berlin, Germany, from 23-25 May 2019. The deadline to apply is December 31, 2018. The results will be announced late January 2019.
Applicants from all disciplines are welcome to apply. In order to apply for a traveling scholarship, an applicant must meet the following criteria:
Preference will be given to applicants who:
This program offers funding for travel and registration only; applicants will need to secure funding from other sources to cover additional expenses.
More detailed information about the application process and the online form are available at the IAHPC website. If you need information on how to apply, please contact Genevieve Napier, IAHPC Programs Officer, at [email protected].
Report from the UN Working Group on Ageing
By Giovanna Abbiati
I was invited to represent the Maruzza Foundation at the 9th United Nations Open-Ended Working Group on Ageing and to present the Religions of the World Charter for Palliative Care for Older People. Uniting the voices of patients, human rights advocates, medical experts and faith leaders, the Charter, conceived and devised by the Maruzza Foundation in collaboration with the Vatican Academy for Life, is a unilateral message to policymakers everywhere. It was an immense honor and privilege as a family-run NGO to be able to participate and contribute to promoting integrated palliative care as part of the UN’s global agenda.
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to IAHPC for organizing this side event, in particular to Dr. Katherine Pettus for her passion and commitment.
Once again, IAHPC and the Maruzza Foundation of Italy have joined forces to raise public awareness and advocate in one of the most important international governmental institutions for improved palliative care provision, especially in low- and middle-income countries, and particularly for the most vulnerable members of our society: children and older people.
It was a truly interesting meeting — the presentation of Kseniya Shapoval and Erika Montero were particularly inspiring — and I am confident that we can, together, move away swiftly and efficiently from today’s unacceptable inequality in access to palliative care: low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) versus high-income countries (HICs).
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