José Miguel Carrasco, a visiting research fellow within the ATLANTES Program of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) at the University of Navarra, completed a one-year research stay within the End of Life Studies Group at the University of Glasgow, Dumfries campus (Scotland). The stay received financing from the José Castillejo scholarship,awarded bySpain’s Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport.

During the year, he studied the impact of the World Health Assembly’s WHA67.19 resolution, focused on strengthening palliative care as part of comprehensive life-long treatment. This is the most important international resolution in its field.

He also worked on the Scottish Atlas of Palliative Care, using data collected by the End of Life Studies Group. The study was published as an article in the academic journal BMJ Supportive and Palliative Care. In addition, he contributed to the methodology of other studies that the group is working on and also collaborated by tutoring postgraduate students.

Working for the global implementation of palliative care

The researcher noted that the stay enriched his career’s international trajectory "not only at the curricular level, but also by establishing contact with care professionals in end of life studies from different parts of the world." Through his work, he interviewed key professionals on four continents (Asia, America, Africa and Europe) from both the public and private sectors.

After a year in Scotland working on palliative care,José Miguel Carrasco noted that he wants to focus on a new project, i.e.,working towards the effective implementation of palliative care. Carrasco laments that most people who could benefit from palliative care have limited access to it. In this sense, he aims to work directly "for the implementation and improvement in accessibility and quality of these socio-health services" because he is convinced that "they are essential to normalizing and humanizing care at the end of life."

The researcher further details his research stay on the ATLANTES project’s blog and on the End of life studies Group’s website.