Forging the future of palliative care in two-day summit

The first Southeast Institute for Innovation in Palliative and Supportive Care Summit will be held Nov. 1-2.

palliative care stream 2Providing personalized expert care and an extra layer of support for people with serious illness will be the focus of the first Southeast Institute for Innovation in Palliative and Supportive Care Summit. Experts in the field of palliative care from across the nation will address the specific issues of providing palliative care in the Southeast. The summit is hosted by the Center for Palliative and Supportive Care, which is a joint center between the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Medicine and School of Nursing.

The goals of the summit are to explore innovative ways to treat patients facing serious illness, create a sustainable palliative care network and address cultural issues related to providing palliative care in the Southeast. The Summit will also serve as the official launch of the Southeast Institute for Innovation in Palliative and Supportive Care at UAB, which was philanthropically funded in 2016 for the specific purposes of scaling and spreading palliative care education and research across the underserved Southeast region.

“This will be the first summit of this type held in the Southeast and will hopefully provide the building blocks for a sustainable network of providers and systems across the South to spread and scale the delivery of primary- and specialty-level palliative care,” said Rodney Tucker, M.D., director of the Center for Palliative and Supportive Care at UAB. “The speakers on this roster are truly many of the top leaders in the country, and we welcome them to Birmingham for the launch of the Institute and Summit.”

The keynote speakers are Tammie Quest, M.D., director of the Emory Palliative Care Center and president of the American Academy of Hospice and Palliative Medicine; Rubin Pillay, M.D., Ph.D., assistant dean for Global Health Innovation at the UAB School of Medicine; and Mary Ersek, Ph.D., a professor of palliative care at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.

The summit will be held Nov. 1-2 at the Embassy Suites in Hoover. To register, visit the Southeast Institute for Innovation and Palliative and Supportive Care website