Palliative Care Conference 2023

Dr. Christine Pun is an emergency and palliative care physician at Health Sciences North.

She completed her M.D. at the University of Toronto and Family Medicine Residency in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Her clinical experience includes hospital emergency department and inpatient care, cancer centre palliative symptom management clinic and home-based care, in both Tertiary Academic Centre and rural communities.

Dr. Pun is the Ontario Health Northeast Regional Palliative Care Physician Lead and is involved in health system administration at the local, regional, and provincial levels. She is an associate professor at NOSM U and is passionate about the advancement of Person-Centred Decision Making and Palliative Care education.

Dr. Pun is the Co-Chair of the 2023 PALLIATIVE CARE WINTER CONFERENCE 2023, “Broader Horizons in Palliative Care”, and Chair of NOSM University Palliative Care SPC Committee.

Eugene Dufour is an Individual, Marital and Family Therapist, Bereavement Specialist, Compassion Fatigue Educator, and a Critical Incident Stress Debriefing Consultant. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from King’s College at the University of Western Ontario.

He has been working in bereavement, trauma work, hospice palliative care, and the HIV/AIDS movement for the past 30 years. He is a past president of the Ontario Palliative Care Association and the Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association.

In 2002 Eugene was presented with the Commemorative Medal for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth 2nd ‘s Golden Jubilee by the Governor General of Canada for his work in hospice palliative care. In June of 2019 Eugene was named a Paul Harris Fellow by The Rotary Foundation of Rotary International for his involvement in establishing the Rotary Hospice of Stratford Perth.

Eugene presently works as a Psychosocial Spiritual Care Clinician with the Huron Perth Palliative Care Outreach Team. He is the proud “Pepe” to Julia, Aurora, Dylan, and Oakland.

Dr. Hailey Margaret Moore is a palliative care physician working independently in the region of North Bay and Sudbury. She completed her Family Medicine Residency at Northern Ontario School of Medicine and PGY-3 in Palliative Care from the University of Ottawa.

Dr. José Pereira is co-founder and Scientific Officer of Pallium Canada, a not-for-profit foundation and organization founded 22 years ago to build primary palliative care capacity across care settings, professions, specialties and disease groups through education. It trains about 9000 health care professionals a year on the palliative care approach. Dr Pereira has a Masters Degree and PhD in education. Over the years has worked in different care settings and helped develop local, regional and provincial palliative care programs and initiatives. He is currently doing a sabbatical year at the University of Navarra in Spain.

Dr. Katherine Pettus holds a PhD in Political Theory from Columbia University, and a Master’s degree in Health Law and Policy from the University of California San Diego. She trained in California as a hospice volunteer in 2010, joining the Leadership Development Initiative at the Institute for Palliative Medicine in 2011, and the IAHPC in 2014. 

Her PhD dissertation appeared as a book, ‘Felony Disenfranchisement in America’, now in 2nd edition with SUNY Press, and her Master’s Thesis studied the interface between international law and access to internationally controlled essential controlled medicines for palliative care. Katherine has an extensive list of publications in edited volumes, journals, and a blog. These are collected in her 2020 book, Global Palliative Care: Reports from the Peripheries. 

In her capacity as Senior Advocacy and Partnerships Director, Katherine attends UN organization meetings to advocate for improved availability, and rational use of opioids for palliative care as a component of the right to health. She addresses issues of global palliative care development and policy, especially those affecting older persons, as an essential element of universal health coverage throughout the life course.

Dr. Pettus grounds her global advocacy work in site visits to IAHPC members and partners in Low- and Middle-Income countries, where she participates as often as possible in home-care visits with colleagues who work in extremely challenging circumstances to deliver palliative care to patients in need. She identifies her original role models/mentors as palliative care pioneers Dr. Anne Merriman, founder of Hospice Africa Uganda, and Dr. M.R. Rajagopal, founder of Pallium India.