The Global Palliative Care and Pain Relief Research Hub Webinar Series

Categories: Care, Education, and Featured.

Authors: Billy Rosa, Felicia Marie Knaul, & Katherine Pettus

The vast majority of global palliative care need is unmet, with people living in low- and middle-income countries facing the disproportionate burden of serious health-related suffering. COVID-19 has only exacerbated the urgency to ensure universal access to palliative care as a component of universal health coverage. The Lancet Commission on Global Access to Palliative Care and Pain Relief put forth several lines of action that focused on the equitable alleviation of serious health-related suffering for all people everywhere and international collective action to ensure real-time health system and policy change.

To advance the recommendations of the Lancet Palliative Care and Pain Relief Commission, a team of multidisciplinary clinicians, scientists, scholars, and advocates have merged efforts to forge The Global Palliative Care and Pain Relief Research Hub, based at the University of Miami and spearheaded by Dr. Felicia Knaul. The Research Hub is proud to announce a complimentary webinar series for the global palliative care and hospice communities (additional information and registration link HERE). The series is a collaborative venture between Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center’s Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences and Supportive Care Service; the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Health System; the University of Miami Institute for Advanced Study of the Americas; and the International Association for Hospice & Palliative Care.

Through our tri-institutional partnership, we will disseminate the science and scholarship of The Global Palliative Care and Pain Relief Research Hub and invite commentary from recognized health systems and policy leaders around the world. Implications for research, clinical practice, education and training, and policy and advocacy efforts will be addressed. We invite interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral stakeholders to actively engage in this series that will cover a broad range of topics related to palliative care and pain relief, with an emphasis on global health equity, universal access to palliative care, and social justice. Each session, held every other month, will consist of lectures followed by a live interactive discussion with faculty.

The webinar series will launch on February 24, 2022 from 09:00-10:30 Eastern Standard Time. The topic will focus on, “The U.S. Cancer Pain Crisis and the Global Pain Divide: Two Wrongs and No Closer to Right.” Dates for the remainder of the year will be April 14, June 23, August 25, and December 15, all from 09:00-10:30 Eastern Standard Time. Registration is free. Once you register for the first event, you will be automatically registered for the entire series. Webinars can be viewed live or on-demand. CME will be provided.

The series will feed directly into MSK’s complimentary 3rd Annual U.S. Celebration of World Hospice & Palliative Care Day: A Virtual Coming Together conference event, to be held October 3-4, 2022 (conference program currently being finalized). Each year since 2020, the conference has attracted about 270 participants from at least 15 countries. The theme of the 2022 MSK conference will align with the broader World Hospice & Palliative Care Day theme identified by the Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance.

We look forward to joining with all of you during the webinar series to share innovations in science and promote palliative care and pain relief advocacy efforts locally, nationally, regionally, and globally.

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