EURO IMPACT, European Intersectorial and Multidisciplinary Palliative Care Research Training, is funded by the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013, under grant agreement N° 264697).

Introduction:
While international research on palliative care has begun to develop over the past decades, it has not kept pace with the growing demand for high quality care. To meet the societal challenges accompanying the dramatic increase of patients facing the need for good palliative care in the forthcoming decades, there is an urgent need for enhanced collaborative research training in palliative care. This generation of researchers and the next is to be provided with the best possible skills to improve evidence based palliative care and influence palliative care policies at national and international level.
EUROIMPACT aims to develop a multi-disciplinary, multi-professional and intersectorial educational and research training framework in Europe aimed at monitoring and improving the quality of palliative care in Europe.

EURO IMPACT will develop a broad-based multi-disciplinary palliative care research training that will train researchers in mastering scientific skills to describe palliative care and its quality across Europe and identify and develop tools to improve it.

Methods:
EUROIMPACT is a Marie Curie Initial Training Network funded under Framework Programme 7 of the European Commission. With 11 partners from universities, socio-economic and private partners and several European umbrella organisations all at the forefront of palliative research and representing a wide spectrum of disciplines and professions.

Discussion:
EUROIMPACT is currently training 12 junior and 4 experienced researchers from a wide range of EU countries. On-the-job training will be supplemented with structured courses concerning palliative care research and network-wide trainings on multidisciplinarity, ethics, cross-national research and societal dissemination. EUROIMPACT will bridge the gap between research institutes, multiple disciplines and different sectors and enhance cross-fertilization of research activities leading to a reduction of fragmentation on a topic of great EU relevance. As a result, EUROIMPACT will build the basis for the further development of an EU platform for palliative care PhD research training and increase the international mobility of palliative care researchers across Europe.

For more information download the Project overview or visit the project website: www.euro-impact.eu