📅 May 22nd–July 11th 2025 Click to Join!

Children’s palliative care workshop (EPEC workshop): This one day workshop is sponsored by St Jude Children’s Hospital and is by invitation only. The workshop will have two streams:

• Leadership in children’s palliative care
• Introduction to children’s palliative care

Please contact eve.namisango@africanpalliativecare.org or julia.downing@icpcn.org

The Ministers of Health Session will be hosted by the Government of Uganda, by the Botswana Minister of Health. This will be in collaboration with the African Palliative Care Association, WHO’s AFRO Office, the Federation of Palliative Care in French-speaking countries, and internal security organs in Botswana. APCA will utilise the lessons drawn from the inaugural Ministers of Health session on palliative care which was successfully undertaken in Johannesburg, South Africa in September 2013, Kampala in 2016, Kigali, Rwanda in 2019, and Kampala, Uganda in 2022 to make the 2025 session even more effective and successful.

Aim

To provide a regional forum through which African ministers of health and other regional organisations can share progress made in their countries, exchange lessons and best practices, and develop a strategy for accelerating financing for palliative care development.

Objectives

• To increase awareness at the policy level of the roles and responsibilities of governments in the implementation of the 2014 WHA Resolution on Palliative Care and other global and regional commitments.
• To exchange lessons, best practices, and country-based progress made against the 2013 African Ministers of Health Consensus Statement for palliative care integration into health systems in Africa.
• To develop regional strategies for increasing financing for palliative care and allied health services.
• To share and discuss country-based and regional progress against the 2014 WHA Resolution on Palliative Care and other relevant global and regional frameworks and strategies.
• To sensitise regional bodies that drive Africa’s development goals on the importance of investing in palliative and comprehensive chronic care.
• Provide a platform for international agencies such as WHO, IAEA, INCB, and UICC to update the ministers.

Enhancing evidence translation and impact: policy engagement for early-career researchers. Click to Join!

African experts and organisations, like the African Palliative Care Association, have played a key role in shaping palliative care policies and advising the World Health Organization. However, African researchers are often not engaged in policy discussions, limiting the translation of evidence into meaningful change. The upcoming triannual African Palliative Care Conference, which will bring together leaders from across the continent, provides a rare and timely opportunity to address this gap.

Aims

Our NIHR Global Health Research (GHR) group, working in Uganda, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, aims to improve access to palliative services. We have built a network of researchers from nine African countries and seek to strengthen their ability to engage with policymakers. We aim to ensure that research evidence is effectively used to shape policies that expand access to palliative care.

Workshop objectives:

• Provide a platform for ECRs to learn from experts in policy engagement and research impact.
• Train a cohort of ECRs on organising and running a policy workshop.
• Enable ECRs to gain policymaking insights through direct interaction with policymakers.

To participate, you are required to make a contribution of USD 30 dollars towards meals.

Mapping African bereavement evidence and developing a future African grief research agenda: an opportunity to share your perspectives Click to Join!

Contributors: Daniel Knights, Eve Namisango, Joe Bradley, Natuhwera Germans, Julia Downing, Elizabeth Namukwaya, Simon Etkind

Background / Context:

Bereavement is a universal human experience and it has well-established and far-reaching potential consequences on physical, psychological, social and spiritual wellbeing. Research suggests that bereaved people use more healthcare services and are at increased risk of early excess mortality. Africa is the world region with the highest fertility rate but the shortest life expectancy, meaning that experience of death and bereavement are more frequent. Examples of research and innovation in African bereavement support exist but it currently lags behind more general palliative care development across the continent.

Aim:

An exciting new collaboration between APCA, Makerere University and Cambridge University (UK) has been established, funded by the ALBORADA Trust, which aims to summarise existing research on bereavement in Africa and carry out a Delphi study to establish consensus research priorities in this important field.

Methods:

A systematically approached mapping review of existing literature on various aspects of bereavement experience and bereavement support interventions across Africa is currently underway and the results of this will be presented in this workshop. Research database searches after initial de-duplication has led to 2652 records to be screened for inclusion and categorised into an evidence map. We will also summarise the outputs from the pre-conference bereavement workshop and invite further contributions and perspectives on the research prioritisation process. This workshop session will then be an opportunity to share experiences, ideas and visions for future development of bereavement research, education and services in Africa.

Results:

The outputs from this workshop, alongside the pre-conference workshop will then inform subsequent online survey rounds to establish consensus on the most pressing research priorities. It is hoped that this initiative will lead to the establishment of an active pan-African research network on bereavement with academic collaborations and funding applications to enact some of the identified research priorities.

Discussion:

This workshop will be of particular interest to participants with professional and lived experience of grief and bereavement or an interest in learning more or developing services in this area. You will gain a deeper appreciation of current research evidence, pertinent evidence gaps and have an opportunity to contribute to a burgeoning conversation around future bereavement research work across Africa.