Program in Palliative Care Research
Vision
The Program in Palliative Care Research is committed to developing the knowledge and skills that will further promote and advance the field of palliative care and thus improve care for persons living with advanced illness.
Our mission is to foster ground-breaking research, support the development of a new generation of investigators, provide an administrative home for researchers, and address the major issues facing both patients with advanced illness and their families. Finally, we will aim to take our research findings and rapidly translate them into effective clinical practice.
Background
Unlike other areas of medicine, the knowledge base to support palliative care clinical practice (i.e., pain and symptom management, communication skills, care coordination) is small and inadequate and systems of care that truly support the needs of patients and families have yet to be developed. Evidence is needed to inform and shape the clinical practice of interdisciplinary health care teams who are charged with providing symptom relief across a wide variety of settings and diseases for this population.
The growing numbers of older Americans and the increasing prevalence of advanced chronic illness create an imperative to advance research in palliative care for this population. Palliative Medicine was approved as an American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS) specialty in September 2006, creating additional urgency for increasing the palliative medicine evidence base.
Reports from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 1997, 2001, and 2003; the Research Task Force of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine (the membership organization of palliative care physicians) in 2003; and the National Institute of Health's (NIH) State of the Science Conference on End-of-Life Care in 2004 have called for the development of:
1. A cadre of palliative care experts whose numbers and talents are sufficient to organize and conduct biomedical, clinical, behavioral, and health services research for patients with serious and chronic illness, and
2. Research networks and multi-site studies to establish the knowledge base of the field and contribute to the goal of bringing an evidence-based approach to palliative care practice.