Collaborations with the international community are synergistic endeavors in our mission to implement and improve palliative and end-of-life care throughout the world. The EPEC team has collaborated with health care professionals to teach and implement palliative care practices in numerous countries, including Lebanon, Jordan, Georgia, Moldova, India, and Saudi Arabia.

Although our efforts to provide critical training and implement effective palliative care strategies are crucial parts of this exchange, these international partnerships also provide valuable insights about the philosophy and practice of palliative care in other cultures and countries.

EPEC - India was initiated to develop a curriculum to meet the specific needs of India on a national and regional level and to synchronize standards of care with the existent medical, sociocultural, and legal environments of that country. EPEC - India created a curriculum that is specific to current cultural and medical practices in India and has developed educational materials and media to facilitate the implementation of palliative care in various institutions throughout the country. This portion of EPEC - India was funded by a grant from the Lance Armstrong Foundation,with the goal of promoting effective palliative and end-of-life care beyond the national level.

Login to download EPEC - India curriculum.

Frank D. Ferris, MD, is director of international programs at the Institute for Palliative Medicine. His work centers on disseminating expertise in palliative medicine to developing countries around the world and his successes have been recognized by the State Department, the National Cancer Institute, and the World Health Organization.

Click here to view an interview with Dr. Frank Ferris.

As a part of its long-standing collaboration with Hospice Uganda, EPEC conducted research to assess the feasibility of pilot programs in the areas of day care and caregiver training and certification in the region of Kampala, Uganda. The results of the feasibility study indicate that creating a low technology, low skill health care economy based on training and certification of family caregivers in palliative care would most likely be welcomed by this population.

More information is available here.

EPEC in Saudi Arabia

The National Guard Health Affairs (NGHA) and King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences partnered with EPEC in their ongoing effort to improve the care of their patients and to alleviate their suffering. EPEC Faculty and EPEC - Oncology Master Facilitators taught the EPEC - Oncology curriculum to participants from over 13 Middle East countries in May 2010. Consistent with the EPEC format, the third day of the symposium focused on teaching and education event planning. It is estimated that each of the 150 newly created EPEC Trainers will disseminate the EPEC curriculum to numerous colleagues, providing for thousands of newly trained clinicians in the middle east as a result of this single conference.

Participants and faculty at End-of-Life Care Symposium in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.