Message from the Chair and Executive Director
Dear readers:
Welcome to this final issue of our Newsletter for the year 2010.
At the end of this year, six of our Board members will be completing their terms. They are: Gian Domenico Borasio (Germany); Eduardo Bruera (USA); Frank Ferris (USA); Geoffrey Hanks (UK); Richard Harding (UK); and Peter Hudson (Australia). Please join us in thanking each of them for their contributions to IAHPC and for their efforts in helping the organization achieve its mission. It has been an honor for us to have worked with them as members of our Board.
We recently sent an announcement to IAHPC members asking them to nominate candidates for these positions. We are seeking junior and senior candidates to join our board to advance palliative care in the world. This edition of the Newsletter has a copy of the announcement including the information and criteria to apply. The deadline to submit a nomination is December 31, 2010. Newly elected members will be announced in January 2011.
As the year ends, we are proud of the things we were able to achieve through our programs and projects. This includes the support we were able to provide to developing countries in the accomplishment of our mission. Some examples of our 2009 and 2010 activities that targeted the improvement of care of patients and families around the world included:
- A new membership fee schedule based on the Gross National Income of the country where the applicant lives. Dues start at $10 per year for individuals living in countries classified as Low by the United Nations.
- IAHPC members now have FREE access to the CINAHL database which contains thousands of citations and online journals, including the following palliative care journals:
- Indian Journal of Palliative Care
- International Journal of Palliative Nursing
- Internet Journal of Pain, Symptom Control & Palliative Care
- Journal of Palliative Medicine
- Journal of Pain and Palliative Care Pharmacotherapy
- Palliative Medicine
- Progress in Palliative Care
- We developed and implemented Pallipedia ® http://pallipedia.org/ which is a specialized online dictionary currently used by an increasing number of members of the palliative care community from the entire world.
- We initiated the Essential Practices in Palliative Care project that aims to identify and list those practices that are considered essential for the implementation of palliative care in primary care.
- We developed an Opioid Essential Prescription package (OEP) project aimed to identify a simple, essential package of medications for patients who have been started on an opioid regimen.
- We collaborated with the World Health Organization, in several projects and publications.
- Ninety-eight traveling scholarships were awarded to individuals from 35 countries. Through this program IAHPC provided more than $129,000 in financial support to palliative care leaders from developing countries to attend international palliative care congresses, courses, seminars and training sessions. A list of all the names of our grantees, their country of origin and the teaching courses, seminars and congresses they attended are listed in the following
annex.
- Three traveling fellowships were awarded to individuals to teach palliative care in developing countries including the Russian Federation, Colombia and South Africa. Through this program IAHPC provides financial assistance to support the travel of faculty.
- An advocacy strategy was developed to improve access to opioid analgesics for medical needs in Latin America using workshops in Peru, Chile, Panama and Guatemala.
- IAHPC’s Website expanded at www.hospicecare.com It has thousands of pages of information which are constantly updated by our Webmaster Anne Laidlaw and her team at Alou Web Design. All the pages are free and are accessed by readers every day from all corners of the globe. Several sections in the website are very popular and they register many visitors per day, including our Bookshop which contains hundreds of books reviewed by Dr. Roger Woodruff one of our board members.
- IAHPC’s Newsletter (NL) continues to provide updated information about new developments, events and progress reports from programs and individuals from around the world. We are very grateful with Dr. William Farr, the editor of our NL, for his voluntary work in editing and putting together this NL that reaches more than 6,000 subscribers around the world each month.
- In addition to our regular programs mentioned above, we were able to collaborate with other organizations in several ways.
We could not have achieved all of this without the generous support of our board of directors, our members, donors, companies, foundations and organizations that believe in IAHPC’s mission and in our ability to have an impact on the promotion and development of palliative care. Our ability to continue to help others depends heavily on the support we receive from all of you, so please consider donating to IAHPC. You can donate through our website at https://www.hospicecare.com/give/donate.html
We face many challenges in the near future, especially because of the current global economic situation. We are aware that we face financial constraints and have prepared ourselves to meet these challenges. Our strong commitment to supporting the development of palliative care around the world will continue to be our driving force. We wish to thank those who make our work worthwhile; they are the patients and their families, the health care workers, and the volunteers who dedicate and give so much to palliative care.
In the next days, many of you will receive a letter in the mail requesting a donation to IAHPC. Please remember that your contributions make a big difference and any amount is helpful to us. IAHPC is a 501 (c)( 3) organization under the US Internal Revenue Code . Our ability to continue to help others depends heavily on your support; please consider donating to IAHPC at
https://www.hospicecare.com/give/donate.html
Best wishes to you, your friends and families for the upcoming holidays and we hope that next year will be a happy and successful one.
Regards,
Roberto Wenk, MD
Chair, Board of Directors
Liliana De Lima, MHA
Executive Director
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