Message from the Chair
&
Executive Director
Kathleen M. Foley, MD (USA)
Liliana De Lima, MHA (USA)
Dear readers:
Welcome to the November issue of the IAHPC Newsletter. As always, we have several important announcements:
The Declaration of Venice promotes the support of a global palliative care agenda and is sponsored by IAHPC and the European Association for Palliative Care (EAPC). Several regional and national organizations have endorsed the Declaration which continues to generate a lot of interest. The Declaration calls for the support and development of research in palliative care, especially in developing countries. Two thousand people from around the world have signed the document. If you haven’t signed it yet, we invite you to do so through our website at http://www.hospicecare.com/dv/ You will also be able to see the list of individuals who have already signed the Declaration.
The Declaration is not just a document to be read, but one that calls for action and makes several recommendations, one of which is to facilitate the transfer of information between developed and developing countries. Following the spirit of the Declaration the Spanish society for Palliative Care (Sociedad Española de Cuidados Paliativos - SECPAL) has made available to their palliative care colleagues in Latin America several of their articles published in Medicina Paliativa. These articles have been uploaded in the Latin American Association for Palliative Care’s website at www.cuidadospaliativos.org We extend our thanks to SECPAL and Publicaciones ARAN for providing this opportunity to our Latin American colleagues. Access to publications and peer reviewed journals is very restricted in developing countries and we have been addressing the need of improving access for institutions. We hope this gesture from SECPAL will serve as a model for other publishers to put into practice the Declaration of Venice .
During the month of October we registered more than 2 Million hits in our website! In addition, we registered more than 35,000 visitors from around the world. Many thanks to all, for without your help we would have never reached this milestone. During this past July we registered hits over the 1 million mark and now 4 months later we seen an increase of another million. This demonstrates the need for palliative care and hospice care information. We hope to continue to grow and provide valuable information to all our hospice and palliative care colleagues around the world. We extend many thanks to our webmaster, Anne Laidlaw and her team at Alou Web Design for their excellent work and effort.
We are glad to announce that this month we awarded two additional traveling scholarships to two physicians from Latin America who will be spending time training in the Department of Palliative Care at the University of Texas ’ MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. They are Alejandra Palma, MD from Universidad Catolica, in Santiago, Chile and Jorge Eisenchlas, from Hospital Udaondo in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Ana Restrepo, our manager for member services, has been sending out letters to individuals who did not renew their membership in the past few years. Please remember how important your membership is to IAHPC. Membership funds allow us to continue our mission. If you wish to join as a member or renew your past membership through our website, click here http://www.hospicecare.com/join.htm
Last month we announced that we are collaborating with the Department of Palliative and Supportive Services at Flinders University in Australia in order to help collect information about educational programs being offered around the world. If you know, or are involved in any post graduate program, we invite you to submit the relevant information by completing a brief questionnaire. Those who are interested in participating have until November 10th to send the information. To access the questionnaire please click the following link
http://www.hospicecare.com/phpQ/fillsurvey.php?sid=19
Remember that we are now accepting nominations for our IAHPC Recognition Awards Program in three categories:
1. Individual - Vittorio Ventafridda Award: For Individuals who have demonstrated leadership in palliative care and have had a significant impact in the provision of palliative care in their community and region.
2. Institutional Award: For institutions (hospitals, clinics, hospices) that have implemented a successful and comprehensive palliative care program to meet the needs of the patients in the relevant community
3. University Award: For academic hospitals, teaching institutions and universities that have implemented formal palliative care programs as part of the undergraduate or graduate levels in either nursing or medicine.
Each category has a prize of US $2,000. Deadline for applications is December 31st, 2006 . Winners will be announced in early February 2007. To read more about the Awards program or to nominate a person, institution or university, please click here http://www.hospicecare.com/Awards/ If you know someone who has performed an outstanding service in palliative care, or an institution which has served as a role model in its region, or a university which has incorporated palliative care in its program, consider nominating them to this award.
Until next month,
Kathy Foley, MD
Chair, Board of Directors
Liliana De Lima, MHA
Executive Director
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