Global Partners in Care (GPIC) and Elea Institute have formed a partnership designed to extend access to palliative care services worldwide.

The two organizations are currently working to convene teams of experts to meet in Dublin, Ireland, later this year. These experts will design a tangible framework for addressing barriers to palliative care access globally, including increasing awareness, workforce development, identifying policy and research gaps and preparing future leaders, according to John Mastrojohn III, CEO and president of Global Partners in Care.

“The thing that’s important for us is that we want to make sure that we’re really creating that through this sort of collective wisdom of the global palliative care leaders, and we think that’s the critical importance in what we’re doing,” Mastrojohn told Palliative Care News. “We’re going to look at how we can define success in this project, and we’re seeing that success is really this consensus on the most urgent needs and priorities and some clear actionable steps that organizations can take to be able to expand on that access.”

The Indiana-based palliative care provider Center for Hospice Care (CHC) is looking beyond its immediate community and has developed networks that impact palliative care on a global scale.

Global Partners in Care collaborates with more than 100 hospice and palliative care organizations around the world to improve access to those services among underserved communities that often lack resources. The organization became an affiliate of the Indiana-based provider Center for Hospice Care in 2017.

Now, it oversees direct partnerships between U.S. and international hospices in 10 African countries – South Africa, Malawi, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and the Kingdom of Eastwatini, also known as Swaziland.

Elea Institute saw the opportunity for collaboration with Global Partners in Care as a “natural partnership,” according to Kent Mathy, chair of Elea Institute’s board of directors.

“The institute’s mission is to fund efforts that increase awareness and access, and in our conversations with GPIC, we just saw a natural partnership,” Mathy told Palliative Care News. “We see ourselves as thought partners in working to provide financial support for convenings like this, and what we’re excited about is the opportunity to take these lessons that we know we’re going to learn from this expertise as we convene it. We hope to inform policy through recommendations and demonstrations on how innovation can make a real difference to reduce cost and improve patient outcomes.”

Elea is a nonprofit foundation established with funds from Addus HomeCare Corp’s (Nasdaq: ADUS) $85 million acquisition of the Illinois-based nonprofit JourneyCare. A portion of the proceeds of the sale went to establish the institute, funds that are expected to fund its programs into the long term.

The organization is focused on three key domains — access to hospice and palliative care and serious illness care, education and awareness and research.

Currently only 14% of patients in need of palliative care around the world actually receive it, according to Global Partners in Care. The greatest need is found in low- and middle-income countries, which represent 76% of global palliative care needs, Mastrojohn said.

The need is even greater when it comes to pediatric palliative care, according to Mastrojohn.

“We do know that the demand continues to increase for global palliative care, and by 2060 we understand that the global need for palliative care is actually expected to double,” Mastrojohn said. “We know that not only is what we’re doing today important, but it’s urgent more than ever to be able to respond to these needs.”