Steering Group

Joint Interim Chair – Professor Allan Kellehear

Allan Kellehear is the academic founder and international lead for the public health approach to palliative and end of life care. He established and led the Palliative Care Unit at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia – the first non-clinical, public health practice-based, palliative care unit in the world. His foundational books on the topic – Health Promoting Palliative Care (1999) and Compassionate Cities (2005) – are widely cited in the international academic and policy literature. He has published some 25 books and over 120 articles on death, dying, and end of life care and has held numerous professorships in Australia, Japan, England, and the USA. Allan was the inaugural President (2015-19) of Public Health Palliative Care International (PHPCI). He is currently Professor of End-of-Life Care at Northumbria University in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

Joint Interim Chair – Professor Julian Abel

Julian became a consultant in palliative care 2001 and for the majority of his clinical life, he became increasingly involved in finding ways of building compassionate communities around people at end of life. He has run projects at local, regional and national levels. He and Professor Allan Kellehear are the editors of the Oxford Textbook of Public Health Palliative Care. From 2016 Julian worked with Frome Medical Practice in Somerset in developing a new model of primary care combined with compassionate communities. The health outcomes of this model have been dramatic. Professor Abel is joint author along with Lindsey Clarke of The Compassion Project. He runs a podcast, Survival of the Kindest about compassion, its presence, its absence and the consequences of both. Julian has recently become Visiting Professor at the University of Northumbria Newcastle.

Interim Vice Chair – Dr Emma Clare

Dr Emma Clare is CEO of End of Life Doula UK and represents the organisation on the National End of Life Care Coalition. A Chartered Psychologist and practising end of life doula in training, Emma holds both a PhD and MSc in health psychology, with a focus on death competency development in healthcare professionals and the impact of death anxiety on advance planning behaviours. Emma is also a founding member of the End of Life Doula International Research Group, which works to advance global understanding and evidence for the role of doulas in supporting dying people and increasing community death literacy.

Joint Clinical Lead – Dr Lucy Pain

Dr Lucy Pain is a Palliative Medicine Consultant with over 20 years of medical experience across the NHS and charitable sectors, having worked in acute hospitals, hospices, and community settings. She has particular expertise in Critical Care and Organ Donation. Lucy has held multiple clinical leadership roles, including at Queen’s Hospital, Romford, during which they achieved an Outstanding CQC rating for End of Life Care. She has recently served as Strategic Clinical Lead at the Gold Standards Framework charity and continues as both Lead Inpatient Unit Consultant at North London Hospice and Clinical Lead for Organ Donation at North Middlesex University Hospital. In 2024, she was appointed the official expert for Hospice UK’s Dying Matters Awareness Week and represented England on the expert panel for National Advance Care Planning Day 2025. Passionate about empowering people to make informed choices about their care, Lucy is committed to normalising conversations around death and dying with compassion and confidence.

Joint Clinical Lead – Dr Colette Hawkins

Dr Colette Hawkins is an Academic Consultant in Palliative Medicine in North East England. Her expertise focuses on unmet needs and raising standards of end of life care across a multi-agency workforce. She leads the Routes to Rights research programme, investigating legal issues, particularly social welfare needs, in life-limiting conditions. Engaging the public and a wide range of agencies has established routes to meeting needs more effectively. Colette has considerable expertise in workforce development and transforming practice through education. Funded by Health Education England, she developed a programme of learning around end of life based on stories. She delivers multi-agency learning, facilitating discussion around prevalent issues often missed through traditional education. She continues to evolve this programme, working towards national reach with an inclusive End of Life Academy.

Treasurer

Dr Emma Hodges, member of the Royal Society for Public Health has expertise in HR/Organisational development, charity leadership, and public health palliative care.  Having worked in the NHS, a charitable hospice where she was CEO for seven years and Compassionate Communities UK, she is the founder of Public Health Palliative Care UK and runs a management consultancy focused on organisational development, healthcare, equity, and diversity. Emma’s recent projects include her work with CommonAge’s, Dementia in the Commonwealth Report and the ongoing development of Compassionate Birmingham. She is a Trustee for E-Hospice and Treasurer for Public Health Palliative Care International and leads on their compassionate community endorsement programme. She holds a doctorate in Health Planning and Management.

Interim Public Engagement

PR / Comms Lead

Rev. Karen Murphy

Karen is a full-time palliative care chaplain at a hospice in Weston super Mare, and have been in post for 20 years. She is a Methodist minister and worked in circuit ministry for 18 years, and began her interest in palliative care chaplaincy during that time, before taking on a chaplaincy and spiritual lead role.  As a member of the Association of Hospice and Palliative Care Chaplains (AHPCC), Karen has held various offices on the executive, becoming president in 2015. She have represented this area of chaplaincy at national and international level, and have attempted to enable greater understanding of the role and value of chaplains in palliative care settings. In 2017 Karen co-edited ‘Chaplaincy in Hospice and Palliative Care’ (Jessica Kingsley Press) and have written several articles, including a recent international collaboration documenting the effects of COVID 19 on chaplaincy services.  https://journals.sagepub.com/toc/pcca/75/1_suppl