| |
 Irene
Higginson is Professor of Palliative Care and Policy at Guy's,
King's and St Thomas' School of Medicine, King's College London.
A physician
specializing in palliative care and epidemiology, Dr. Higginson
completed her medical training at Nottingham University School
of Medicine. She was awarded her PhD from the University of London,
and is a Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health Medicine, of the
Royal College of Physicians, UK.
Palliative
care is a specialty that cares for patients with advanced, incurable
conditions, providing expertise in the management of symptoms,
supporting distressed patients and families, co-ordinating complex
social care, promoting patient choice at the end of life and support
in bereavement.
Dr. Higginson is the founding professor of her current department,
established in 1996. The department oversees research programmes investigating
the needs of patients and families and evaluating care and treatments,
teaching of medical students and Masters and PhD students, and
clinical services in King's College and St Thomas' Hospitals.
Prior to her
current appointment, from 1992-6, Irene Higginson was senior lecturer
in the Health Services Research Unit at the London School of Hygiene
and Tropical Medicine and Director of Research and Development
in Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster Health Authority. Prior
to that she worked in St Joseph's Hospice, Hackney; University
College London; University College Hospital; and the Bloomsbury
Palliative Care Team, London, in a range of clinical and academic
posts.
Irene Higginson
has published widely on palliative care, quality of life measurement,
and evaluation of services and therapies, in scientific journals
and in textbooks. She has developed two tools used widely in the
UK and many other countries to help in the assessment of patients
and families and in the quality of care. She serves on the boards
of journals and of medical grant awarding bodies in UK, USA, Italy,
Canada, Germany, Australia, Spain, Ireland, Argentina.
 Massimo
Constantini, a physician specializing in oncology since 1985, is
a senior epidemiologist in the Unit of Clinical Epidemiology and
Trials at the National Cancer Institute of Genoa (Italy) since
1991. His research interests are in the areas of palliative care,
quality of life, and psycho-oncology. From 2002 hehas been medical director of
the Genoa Hospice. In the area of palliative care, his recent research
activities have focused on studying multidimensional problems
of terminal cancer patients, and on investigating the effect of
palliative care services on quality of care. His research efforts
in quality of life research have been devoted toward developing
and validating new tools, and in promoting and coordinating randomised
clinical trials with quality of life as outcome.
|