Prof. Luc Deliens granted G. W. Hanks award for palliative care

Prof. Luc Deliens from MyPath partner Vrije Universiteit Brussel received the G. W. Hanks award for his valuable contribution to palliative care research. This award is in memory of Professor Geoffrey Warren Hanks – the first professor in palliative medicine in Europe.

Prof. Deliens is an outstanding researcher and teacher in palliative care from Brussels, Belgium. He has published more than 540 articles, with an H-index of 62. Holding degrees in sociology and human ecology, he is the founding director of the End-of-Life-Care Research Group. Deliens is also the chair of EAPC’s reference group on Public Health and Palliative Care and co-chair of the EAPC research network. He has successfully led and contributed to several EU collaborations for research in palliative care. In addition, Deliens has inspired and still inspires many young researchers, offering them opportunities and a platform for a career in palliative care research.

As part of the award ceremony, Prof. Deliens held an honorary lecture on how to create more capacity for palliative care and palliative care research in society. An important observation he made was that when society started medicalising palliative care, it also took away the responsibility from communities. End-of-life care, however, is also a civic responsibility. Death and loss, as Deliens views it, are very much social events with a medical component rather than primarily medical events with a social component. He therefore strongly promotes a more comprehensive approach to palliative care, where the clinical approach and the health services approach are complemented by a public health approach. Additional barriers to increasing the societal capacity for palliative care, such as poor knowledge transfer and a lack of research on implementation under real-life conditions, must be addressed: by a stronger focus on implementation science research and developing effective dissemination strategies.