PR - The PHPCI Conference 2022 and the NODES CITY Festival join forces

From 20 to 23 September, a total of 370 conferences participants from all over the world found their way to Bruges. The focus of the 7th Public Health Palliative Care International Conference was upon the dialogue between science and citizens concerning the democratisation of palliative and end-of-life care. Death, suffering and grieving are often taboo subjects in our society. This conference sought to identify a solution to this issue – how can compassionate communities, such as Compassionate Bruges, help to break through this taboo and make sure that serious illness, family care, dying and grieving appear higher up policymakers' agendas?

"At that point, we still look too often and too emphatically in the direction of professional health care providers," says VUB professor Luc Deliens. "It is too easy to ask ourselves what the doctor can do for our sick neighbour. However, as individuals and as a neighbourhood, there is also a great deal that we ourselves can do for people who are sick."

This is exactly what Bruges, along with the support of the VUB, wants to focus on. The PHPCI Conference is held concurrently with the city festival.

"For the occasion, a number of artists and their projects were integrated within the programme for the conference," said VUB professor Joachim Cohen. "The interaction between the participating organisations of the Nodes City Festival and the PHPCI International Congress is reinforcing the ambition to address the challenges surrounding serious illness, family care, dying and grieving in Bruges in the coming years in an even more robust and more substantiated way."

As the city's Alderman for Tourism, Mieke Hoste explains, "The VUB research group Compassionate Communities and Compassionate Bruges, a network of engaged citizens, started working on the conference themes and the result was the Nodes Festival  in the city of Bruges. The historic city centre served as the backdrop for activities on the themes of care, loss and connection. At the conference venue, the brand new BMCC, conference participants were able to work on public health and palliative care issues in various workshops. This conference definitely provides added value for our city and its residents. I am therefore grateful to the Visit Bruges Convention Bureau for bringing this conference to our city."

About PHPCI

The End-of-Life Care Research Group (VUB/Ghent University) is hosting the conference and brings together leading innovators, researchers, practitioners, policymakers and civil society representatives in the field of palliative care.

About Compassionate Bruges

In 2020, Bruges was the first city in Belgium to become a 'Compassionate City'. With Compassionate Bruges, we want to give loss, death, grief, mourning, situations of serious illness and long-term (informal) care a place in our city. We want to connect people with each other and strengthen existing initiatives and organisations so that Bruges can become even more of a caring city and a city in which people stand by and support each other. 

Info for editors

Contact:
Visit Bruges Convention Bureau
Jasmine Kestens, Sales Manager
E: meeting@brugge.be / T: +32(0)050/44 46 66

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