New Funding for Palliative Care at McGill

More than 60,000 Canadians will be diagnosed with cancer this year and will require special end-of-life or palliative care. According to practitioners, researchers and families there has been a lack of palliative care services for these patients. Thanks to new funding from the Canadian Institutes for Health Research (CIHR), McGill researchers will now be able to evaluate the most effective and efficient types and methods of palliative care.

Their programme, led by Robin Cohen of McGill’s Department of Oncology, will advance palliative care research and may ultimately lead to improved care for people dying of cancer.

Other partners in the McGill programme are the National Cancer Institute of Canada, l’Université Laval and the University of Ottawa.

The CIHR announced today $16.5 million in funding for the CIHR Palliative and End-of-Life Care Initiative. It is designed to create a strong research base and recognize the field of palliative care research as a discipline in its own right. Other research projects include pain management options, health care delivery, and early palliative care interventions.

“We are radically changing the face of palliative care in Canada,” says Phil Branton, CIHR’s Institute of Cancer Research’s Scientific Director and a professor of Biochemistry at McGill. “It is equally important that we keep the momentum going and attract and train new researchers to the field who will make sure that Canadians are always offered the highest quality end-of-life care.”

Today’s CIHR announcement was made in Montreal during the 15th International Congress of the Care of the Terminally Ill, organized by the Palliative Care Division of the Department’s of Medicine and Oncology at McGill.