Aline De Vleminck

MSc, PhD - Sociologist

Aline De Vleminck (born 1986) is a post-doctoral researcher working at the End-of-Life Care Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) & Ghent University. She studied Sociology at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) and obtained her Master’s degree in 2010. In 2011, she started to work as a junior researcher at the End-of-Life Care Research Group, Ghent University & Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Aline conducted research on advance care planning in general practice, supervised by Prof. dr. Robert Vanderstichele, Prof. dr. Luc Deliens, Prof. dr. Koen Pardon and Prof. dr. Dirk Houttekier. This study was part of the “Flanders study to Improve End-of-Life Care and Evaluation Tools” (FLIECE project) which was supported by a grant from the Flemish government agency for Innovation by Science and Technology (IWT). This study has resulted in six articles in international peer-reviewed journals, of which five have been published and one is under review, two national publications and one book chapter. The results of this study have also been presented at a number of international and national conferences and symposia. In 2015, she was selected for a Fulbright Scholarship Award. She was granted by the Fulbright Scholar Program to conduct research on hospice care for dementia patients and a qualitative study on advance care planning in  patients with young-onset dementia. She conducted this research at the National Palliative Care Research Center, located at Icahn School of Medicine in New York under the supervision of Prof. dr. R. Sean Morrison. This Fulbright Scholarship provided a unique opportunity to gain research experience abroad and work with leading researchers in the field of palliative care. Aline De Vleminck currently works at the End-of-Life Care Research Group as a post-doctoral researcher on a two-year follow-up project of her PhD dissertation regarding the initiation of advance care planning in general practice. This project is supported by ‘Kom op Tegen Kanker’. She has a strong wish to devote her future scientific career to establishing better advance care planning practice and policy in Belgium and Europe, to improve education and training in this field and to develop new research strategies with a particular focus on vulnerable groups in the field of advance care planning.