University Professor receives international award

An Edge Hill University medic has received international recognition for her work with the terminally ill in Africa.

Professor Barbara Jack, Head of Research and Scholarship and Director of the Evidence-based Practice Research Centre in the Faculty of Health, has been made a Visiting Professor at Hospice Africa Uganda.

HAU is a specialist home care programme which cares for those with terminal illnesses. It is a UK registered charity and was created in 1993 by Dr Anne Merriman, a Liverpudlian and pioneer of the international hospice movement, who received an honorary degree from Edge Hill in 2009 in recognition of her work. Professor Jack has been involved with HAU since 2005. She grew up in Southport and lives in Ainsdale, where the organisation has a charity shop, and made contact with the charity due to her interest in palliative care.

Professor Jack has carried out pioneering research to evaluate the prescribing of morphine by nurses in Uganda - a study which, it is hoped, will influence the care of the dying across the developing world. She is also involved in other research projects; one involving community volunteers, as well as teaching clinical staff to do their own research to address a shortage of academic palliative care researchers in Africa.

Professor Jack said: "This Visiting Professorship is an acknowledgement of my links with HAU and recognition of my work. It formalises this international collaboration and shows that Edge Hill is working with this local charity to the benefit of a developing country."

Hospice Africa Uganda has recently been licensed as a private tertiary education institution by the National Council for Higher Education, part of Uganda's Ministry of Education. This year it will, for the first time, be offering a BSc in Palliative Care degree and increasing its focus on research, which is why Professor Jack's expertise is so important.

Announcing the award, Nina Shalita, Chief Executive Director of Hospice Africa Uganda, told Professor Jack: "We thank you for your efforts in advocating for HAU through the research you have carried out on community aspects of HAU activities. This has not only helped us to improve our implementation in those areas, but has also served as a basis for planning."