COVID-19
Changing Policy and Practice
Professor Irene Higginson from King's College London will use our funding to develop accessible and free resources for patients, the public, and senior leads in health and social care to improve the understanding and integration of palliative care in the UK.

Palliative care supports people affected by serious or advanced illnesses to control symptoms, improve quality of life and help people live well despite their illness. It is needed by over 600,000 people in the UK each year.
Professor Higginson and her team from King's College London studied how palliative care services supported people during the Covid-19 pandemic. In their 'CovPall' study, they found that palliative care developed 'frugal innovations' to care for more people. Services controlled symptoms such as breathlessness, pain and agitation, reducing distress, as well as trained other doctors and nurses, but were often overlooked by policy makers and were poorly understood.
Using the Changing Policy and Practice funding, this project aims to transform the understanding and integration of palliative care evidence so more people can benefit in a long-lasting way. The project will be co-designed and shares information about the main evidence of the CovPall study, including how to best manage symptoms.
The dissemination plan includes the development and evaluation of easily accessible, user-friendly, free resources, for two key groups: members of the public, patients and those important to them; and the senior leads in health and social care. In the UK, this includes Integrated Care Boards and their system partners, such as local authorities and voluntary, community, faith and social enterprise organisations.