Speakers

Samar Aoun is Perron Institute Research Chair in Palliative Care at the University of Western Australia, Head of Palliative Care Research at Perron Institute, and Adjunct Professor at La Trobe University.
Samar advocates for a person-centred health and social care. Her research programs on supporting family caregivers at end of life and the public health approach to bereavement care have informed policy and practice at the national and international levels. Her work on social models in bereavement support has provided empirical evidence to strengthen the Compassionate Communities model of care. She co-founded the South West Compassionate Communities Network in 2018, and is leading the Compassionate Connector Program which has been embedded into practice by the health service.

Stephen Connor, PhD is Executive Director of the Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance, an alliance of over 395 hospice and palliative care organizations in over 100 countries. Dr. Connor has worked continuously in the hospice/palliative care movement since 1975 as an executive, health services researcher, educator, advocate, and psychotherapist, licensed as a clinical psychologist. Connor has published over 150 peer reviewed journal articles, reviews, & book chapters on palliative care and is the author/editor of six books on palliative care including Hospice & Palliative Care: The essential guide, 3^rd Ed (2018) and the 1^st and 2^nd editions of the Global Atlas of Palliative Care (2016/2020), in partnership with WHO.

Liesbeth De Donder is Professor Adult Educational Sciences at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel where she teaches the course “Civil Society and Community Development” and three courses on “Research Methodology”. Her research focuses on social participation and inclusion of older adults, active caring communities, with a particular interest in participatory methodologies (peer-research, co-construction and action research). She is promotor of the Compassionate Communities Centre of Expertise and coordinates the research line “Community Development and Change” in the research group Belgian Ageing Studies.

Luc Deliens is Professor of Palliative Care Research at the VUB Brussels & Ghent University and Founding Director of the End-of-Life Care Research Group in Belgium. He published over 500 papers in peer-reviewed journals, over 50 book chapters, and successfully supervised over 50 PhDs in palliative care or end-of-life decision-making.

As a palliative care physician and health justice activist, Dr. Naheed Dosani is dedicated to advancing equitable access to health care for people experiencing homelessness and marginalization. These efforts include founding the Palliative Education and Care for the Homeless (PEACH) at the Inner City Health Associates and serving as Medical Director for a regional COVID-19 Isolation/Housing Program in the Toronto area. He also serves as the Health Equity Lead at Kensington Health in downtown Toronto and as a palliative care physician at St Michael’s Hospital at Unity Health Toronto. Dr. Dosani shares his passion for health equity through education and advocacy efforts that include media, public speaking, social media and faculty appointments at the University of Toronto and McMaster University. Dr. Dosani's research interests include care models for people experiencing homelessness and access to palliative care among culturally diverse communities.

An Australian born dance person, Rebecca Hilton is Professor in Choreography for the research area Site Event Encounter at Stockholm University of the Arts. As artist, researcher and pedagogue she works to unfold relationships between embodied knowledges, oral traditions and choreographic systems. Situating participatory art practices and projects in spaces that are private, public and/or in flux, her research environments include universities, hospitals, shopping malls, wilderness parks, community gardens and family homes. She is currently contributing artistic research to DoBra, a multi-faceted transdisciplinary research program based at Stockholm’s Karolinska institute, exploring experiences and understandings of, and relationships to, ageing, death and dying in Sweden.

Julie Ling is a Consultant Technical Adviser on Palliative Care at the World Health Organisation Regional Office, Europe. This role aims to strengthen palliative care policy and services in the European region, providing technical advice and support.
Julie has also been CEO of the European Association for Palliative Care since January 2015. The EAPC is the leading palliative care organisation in Europe representing 54 member associations from thirty-three countries across Europe and with individual members from 52 countries globally.
Originally a nurse, Julie has worked in palliative care for thirty-five years in both adult and children’s palliative care. She has held a variety of posts in clinical care; management; research; policy and the voluntary sector. She successfully completed a PhD by research exploring the respite needs and experiences of parents caring for a child with a life-limiting condition. She has an MBA from Trinity College Dublin.
Julie is also Chair of the World Hospice and Palliative Care Alliance, a global palliative care organisation that lobbies and advocates for the provision of palliative care as part of universal health coverage and is a board member of the Health Research Board, Ireland.

Julie.ling@eapcnet.eu

Bregje Onwuteaka-Philipsen, health scientist by background, is professor of end-of-life research at the department of public and occupational health of Amsterdam UMC. She chairs the section Quality and Organization of Care. Within this section she leads the research group public health at the end of life that focuses on research on advance care planning, palliative care and medical decisions at the end of life. As chair of the Expertise Center Palliative Care of Amsterdam UMC and the consortium Palliative Care of the provinces Noord-Holland and Flevoland she contributes to connecting practice, education and research in the field of palliative care.

Claudia Michel PhD is a lecturer at the Institute of Ageing at the Bern University of Applied Sciences. She did her doctorate at the Institute of Geography at the University of Bern and completed the Gender Studies Research Training Group during her doctoral studies. Before she started at the University of Applied Sciences in 2014, she mediated between research and practice for over seven years in the National Centre of Competence in Research North-South as the person responsible for knowledge and technology transfer. At the Institute for Ageing, she is concerned with age work in communal social space. She is particularly interested in the question of how people at the end of life and their relatives can be supported so that they can remain in their traditional environment for as long as possible.

Ruth Raes is a professional coach and consultant. As a guide in learning and change processes, the quintessence of her style is to trigger awareness. For over twenty years, Ruth also holds leadership positions. Today, she manages Netwerk Levenseinde, homecare network in palliative care. She is a transition coach in the change process in first line healthcare and welfare in Flanders and president of the ‘Eerstelijnszone Vlaamse Ardennen’. Co-founder of Villa Rozerood. Previous positions at Quintessence Consulting, Ogilvy Group, Alcatel and Vlerick Business School. Ruth holds a master-degree both in business management (Vlerick Business School) and public administration and management (UGent).

Dr Libby Sallnow is a palliative medicine consultant with CNWL NHS Trust in London, UK and an honorary senior lecturer at St Christopher's Hospice and the UCL Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department, UK. She has helped lead and develop the fields of new public health approaches to end of life care, compassionate communities and social approaches to death, dying and loss over the past two decades in the UK and internationally. Her PhD explored the translation of a model of compassionate communities from Kerala, India to London, UK. She has published over 25 articles and book chapters in these fields and co-edited the book "International perspectives on public health and palliative care" in 2011. She is an Honorary Consultant at the WHO Collaborating Centre for Palliative Care in Kerala, India, Vice President of Public Health Palliative Care International, the President of the Palliative Care Section of the Royal Society of Medicine, UK, a post-doc researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Belgium and the first author of the new Lancet Commission on the Value of death: bringing death back into life (2022).

Lena Sharp, RN, PhD, Head of Department at The Regional Cancer Centre, Stockholm-Gotland, in Sweden. She is past president and chair of the Advocacy working group of the European Oncology Nursing Society. Lena has been a cancer nurse since 1985. She has long experience in clinical cancer nursing, leadership, teaching and research.

Prior to taking up her post at the Regional Cancer Centre, Lena Sharp was the chief nursing officer and patient safety coordinator at the Department of Oncology at Karolinska University Hospital. Her focus areas in research are patient safety, communication, leadership, inequalities and cancer care organization.

Isabel Vermote (°1973) is an Art Historian and Historian. She studied at the Universities of Namur, Leuven, Tübingen and Brussels (VUB).
Isabel has worked since 2008 for the Education Department at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium and is responsible for the program 'Made to Measure’ which offers guided tours, creative courses, workshops and themed activities tailored to specific audiences.
In 2017 Isabel launched the project ‘Art and Care in Dialogue’ organising extra muros visits (at the organisation) and guided tours for people from the Homes for the Elderly, Rehabilitation Centres, Psychiatric Centres, people with Dementia, with a Drug Addiction and in Palliative Care.

As an Associate Professor (Public Health & End-of-Life-Care) he is Vice Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on Aging and Care (CIRAC) at the University of Graz (Austria) and chairperson of the civil society association “Careweb” (Vienna). His research interests are addressing the need for developing and transforming health care systems and societal care networks in elderly and end-of-life care, interlinking palliative care and public health perspectives, care ethics, questions about social justice and the democratization of care. A major aspect of his research and consulting is to promote and develop Caring/Compassionate Communities.

Questions? 
Please contact: endoflifecare@vub.be