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Voices for Palliative Care

Voices for Palliative Care is a group of people with lived experience of serious illness, who are committed to creating meaningful research outcomes, contributing to health service planning and advocating for improvements in palliative care. Voices for Palliative Care offers a platform for researchers to engage with consumers, either collectively or individually, in order to enrich their studies and projects.

The goals of Voices for Palliative Care:

  • Goal 1: To increase opportunity for community involvement in and interface with palliative care.

  • Goal 2: To build capacity of patients and the public to partner with palliative care researchers, health professionals and leaders. 

  • Goal 3: To build capacity of palliative care researchers, health professionals and leaders to partner with patients and the public.

  • Goal 4: To develop the role of people with lived experience in publicly advocating for, and raising awareness of, quality palliative care in serious illness.

  • Goal 5: To build a national and international collaborative network of palliative care researchers, health professionals, leaders and community members with expertise in patient and public involvement specific to this field.

  • Goal 6: To map the impact of patient and public involvement in palliative care to promote the benefit and advance the science underpinning methods of engagement specific to this field.

Who are the Voices for Palliative Care Consumer Representatives?

Voices consist of individuals with diverse backgrounds and experience in serious illness and palliative care. Find out more about our Voices members here.

The group is facilitated by the Palliative Care Research Network (PCRN), a collaborative network of researchers working in palliative care. The PCRN is supported by the Department of Health Victoria, and administered by the Centre for Palliative Care (a Collaborative Centre of St Vincent’s Hospital and the University of Melbourne).

How to connect with Voices for Palliative Care:

Researchers can choose to work with individual Voices members based on their expertise and experience or engage with the entire group for a more global perspective. The group meets approximately every three months and researchers are welcome to attend meetings to pitch an idea and seek potential input from members to help inform their research. Voices members are also available for consultations and they can be contacted for potential research participation (e.g., interviews, focus groups and collaborative discussions).

Please download the involvement forms below and send completed forms to pcrnv@svha.org.au

  • Involvement request form for individual consumers can be downloaded here. Find out more about our Voices members here.

  • Project pitch request form for Voices meetings can be downloaded here.

  • If you are interested in sharing your lived experience with palliative care, and potentially joining Voices, please fill out an Expression of Interest form here.

For more information on the program, please contact Georgia Christopoulos at g.christopoulos@unimelb.edu.au