A first-ever pan-European centre devoted to improving patient palliative care and end of life care was officially launched Thursday, October 15, at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) ,with the opening of the European Palliative Care Research Centre. The centre is based at NTNU's Faculty of Medicine and at St. Olavs Hospital/Trondheim University Hospital.
"We are too small and too few not to work together across national borders", says Professor Stein Kaasa, who is the leader of the new centre as well as a researcher at the NTNU Faculty of Medicine's Pain and Palliation Research Group. The formation of the new centre was announced at the 4th International Trondheim Conference on Palliative Care, held in Trondheim on Oct. 15-16.
The centre will focus on coordinating efforts between groups and individual researchers across Europe, specifically Scotland, England, Italy, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland, along with the USA, Canada and Australia. Researchers hope to boost the amount of international multicentre studies, as well as to create an international PhD programme to educate young researchers in palliative care and to initiate and develop evidence-based guidelines for palliative care.
The Norwegian Cancer Society has awarded a major grant of 15 million NOK (1.8 million euro) to help establish the new centre. Additional support has been awarded by the Open Society Institute in the United States, the Floriani Foundation in Milan, Italy, and Nycomed, the pharmaceutical company.