EAPC RESEARCHER AWARDs
The EAPC is pleased to announce the outcome of the ‘Researcher Award’ competition for 2017. The winner of the Palliative Medicine Researcher Award is Dr Lara Pivodic (Belgium). The Post-Doctoral Award goes to Dr Irene Tuffrey-Wijne (United Kingdom). Dr Miguel Julião (Portugal) is the winner of the Clinical Impact Award.
The Awards Panel of Professor Carlo Leget, Professor Katherine Froggatt, Professor Lieve van den Block, Dr Javier Rocafort and Dr Martin Loučka were pleased to receive 13 applications by the deadline. The standard of applications was very high, with a small group of outstanding candidates. Applications were assessed on the published criteria; namely evidence of sustained engagement with research in palliative care, evidence of the ability to successfully apply for grants, an increasing portfolio of published research papers and other factors that indicate international esteem. The accompanying statements of support were also scrutinised.
The panel are delighted that there are so many excellent emerging researchers who will contribute to the future development of palliative care research and practice.
Palliative Medicine* Early Researcher Award - Dr Lara Pivodic
Lara Pivodic is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the AXA Research Fund and a postdoctoral researcher at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (End-of-Life Care Research Group) and KU Leuven (Centre for Biomedical Ethics and Law). She holds a PhD in Medical Sciences from Vrije Universiteit Brussel (2015), an MSc in psychology from the University of Vienna (2011), and she was a Visiting Research Associate at King’s College London (Cicely Saunders Institute). Lara started her career in palliative care research as a Marie Curie PhD Training Fellow in the European Commission-funded project EURO IMPACT. For her dissertation, she conducted cross-national epidemiological analyses of the provision of palliative care to people with serious chronic diseases and the locations in which they receive care and die.
Lara has a strong interest in studying palliative care for older people, and in developing interventions that will help to improve their care. Her aim is to conduct research that will provide the crucial evidence needed to establish palliative care as an essential element of chronic disease care in older people, both on the level of public health and individual patient care. She is currently involved in several research projects that work towards this aim. For her Postdoctoral Fellowship, Lara is conducting an epidemiological study and in-depth policy analysis regarding the quality of end-of-life care for older people affected by serious chronic diseases in Belgium. Next to this, she is involved in two EU-projects, PACE and INDUCT, and in national research projects that develop and evaluate complex palliative care interventions for older people in primary care and in care homes using innovative theory-based methods.
* The Palliative Medicine Early Researcher Award is supported by Palliative Medicine.
Post-Doctoral Award - Dr Irene Tuffrey-Wijne
Irene Tuffrey-Wijne was born in the Netherlands. She qualified as a nurse in Amsterdam before moving to London in 1985. She has extensive clinical experience in both intellectual disability and palliative care services.
Irene is Associate Professor in Intellectual Disability and Palliative Care at Kingston University & St George’s University of London. She has close collaborative links with Maastricht University (Netherlands). Since 2001, Irene has led a programme of research focusing on intellectual disability, cancer and palliative care, completing a PhD in 2007. She has published widely and presented her work in the UK and across the world, and is recognised as leading international expert in the area of palliative care for people with intellectual disabilities.Inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities as study participants and as salaried co-researchers is a key part of her work.
Irene is an active trustee of the UK based (but international) Palliative Care of People with Learning Disabilities Network (www.pcpld.org). She is chair of the Reference Group for Intellectual Disabilities of the European Association of Palliative Care, working with colleagues from across Europe. They published the EAPC White Paper on Intellectual Disability in 2015.
Clinical Impact Award - Dr Miguel Julião
Miguel Julião is a graduate of the medical school at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon. During his time there, Miguel Julião developed a strong and special interest in palliative care, investing his time and effort in pre and postgraduate teaching, research and clinical practice in palliative medicine. In order to expand his view of palliative care from a cultural perspective, he travelled to the United States of America, Canada and Spain. Miguel Julião completed his training as a family physician.
Working closely with Prof Harvey Chochinov and his research team from the Manitoba University, Canada, Julião successfully defended his PhD thesis on Dignity Therapy (DT) in July 2014 at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon. Following this, he moved to University of Minho´s School of Medicine where he holds an academic position as an Invited Professor, with responsibility for palliative care teaching to undergraduates. He is also responsible for postgraduate palliative care courses and palliative care research. He also contributes to programmes in other Portuguese universities and post-graduate teaching Institutes. Miguel Julião holds several awards and has published over 20 papers on palliative care, end-of-life care, psychosocial suffering, dignity and humanisation. He is involved in several research studies on various aspects of palliative care including end-of-life care, psychosocial experiences and depression where Miguel is involved with the development of a novel three-item depression screening tool (TLP-3). Miguel has a particular interest in research into patient dignity and the need for dignity conserving care in palliative care.
