International Palliative Care: A Podcast with Kathy Foley, Stephen Connor, Eric Krakauer

This week many of our listeners will gather for the annual American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (AAHPM) & Hospice and Palliative Nursing Association (HPNA) annual meeting.  While the majority of this meeting is focused on subspecialty care in the US, the majority of individuals who are in need of palliative care live in low and middle-income countries without even basic access to palliative care.  

On this week's podcast, we talk with three leaders in helping improve palliative care worldwide: Kathy Foley, Stephen Connor, and Eric Krakauer.  I don't think I can really sum up these three guests in a sentence each, but I’ll give you how we introduced them in our podcast. Kathy Foley is a member emeritus of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and past director of the International Palliative Care Initiative (IPCI). Stephen Connor is a licensed clinical psychologist  and executive director of the Worldwide Hospice and Palliative Care Alliance.  Eric Krakauer is an Associate Professor of Medicine and of Global Health & Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, an attending physician in the Division of Palliative Care & Geriatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital, and a former medical officer for palliative care at the World Health Organization. 

The podcast tries to cover a lot of topics including:

• Why is addressing worldwide needs of palliative care important?
• What are the needs of palliative care worldwide?
• How do you quantify worldwide suffering and what is the serious health related suffering index?
• What are some of the main barriers to palliative care?
• What are the models of palliative care worldwide?
• What are some of the resources to improve palliative care?

I encourage you to take a listen, and if you want to learn more check out some of these resources:

• Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance (WHPCA)
• Open Society Foundation’s International Palliative Care Initiative 
• Global Atlas of Palliative Care
• International Association for Hospice and Palliative Care
• JPSM’s issue on the The International Palliative Care Initiative
• eHospice - a globally run news and information resource