Aging & Palliative Care

The EAPC’s Reference Group on Aging and Palliative care aims to advance our understanding of palliative care for older people, particularly those with frailty, identify key areas for improving practice, policy and research, and compile evidence-based practices to improve palliative care for older people in a variety of settings. The Reference Group brings together an international and multidisciplinary network of researchers and professionals involved in studying and improving palliative care for older people.

More specifically, this Reference Group will:

  1. Build an international and multidisciplinary network of researchers and clinicians engaged in the topic of Ageing and Palliative Care (WP1)
  2. Develop a white paper defining an optimal approach to care and support for older people living with frailty and their family, combining palliative, geriatric and rehabilitative approaches, and make recommendations for future research, practice and policy (WP2)
  3. Map existing databases and longitudinal cohort studies in the field of aging, and identify opportunities for palliative care research (WP3)
  4. Map inclusion of palliative care in current health care policies regarding older people in different countries and continents (WP4)
  5. Identify and disseminate evidence-based programmes for improving palliative care for older people in different settings (WP5)
group chairs aging and palliative care Lieve Van den Block and Sophie Pautex

The Reference Group is chaired by Professor Lieve Van den Block,Head of Research Programme on Ageing and Palliative Care, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), End-of-Life Care Research Group, Belgium and Professor Sophie Pautex, Head of the Palliative Medicine Division of University Hospital Geneva and coordinator of the Geriatric Palliative Care Interest Group of EUGMS (European Union Geriatric Medicine Society), Switzerland.