Trent University Professor to Investigate Palliative Care in Rural Communities

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Research project awarded $301,227 by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research

Wednesday, July 20, 2011, Peterborough

Dr. Mark Skinner, associate professor at Trent University, will be a co-investigator on a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) project titled "Refining a Decision-Support Model for Siting Palliative Care Services in Rural Canadian Communities", led by principal investigators at Simon Fraser University, to take place over the next three years.

The project will compare case studies in British Columbia, Ontario and Nova Scotia to help test a new decision-making framework for where to locate palliative care centres in rural areas. Professor Skinner’s role will be to supervise case-study work in rural Ontario in collaboration with Hospice Peterborough, and to train a Trent graduate student to conduct research using CIHR funding for two-years of a Master’s program.

Palliative care comes in many forms, but in general refers to support provided to maintain quality of life for individuals living with chronic conditions at end-of-life, and the facilitation of quality of death for persons in the end stages of disease or infirmary. Rural and remote Canadian communities face particular challenges in providing diverse and specialized forms of palliation, along with other health services and yet such communities are home to rapidly aging populations.

Prof. Skinner is a health, rural and social geographer who teaches in the Department of Geography at Trent University. His primary research interests are the geographies of aging, care and voluntarism, with particular attention to the problem of sustainable rural communities. Featuring community-based research in Canada and internationally, his work contributes to the fields of rural ageing, rural health geography, geographical gerontology, health and social welfare, and the voluntary sector.

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For more information, please contact: Mark Skinner, associate professor, Department of Geography, Trent University 705-748-1011 x7946, markskinner@trentu.ca