The EAPC are pleased to announce the outcome of the 'Young Investigator Award' competition for 2011. The overall winner is Dr Ralf Jox (Germany) with joint runners up being Dr Saskia Jünger (Germany) and Dr Judith Rietjens (The Netherlands). The Awards Panel of Professor Phil Larkin, Professor Sheila Payne and Dr Sophy Gretton were pleased to receive 18 applications by the deadline.
The standard of applications was very high, with a small group of outstanding candidates. Applications were assessed on the published criteria; namely evidence of sustained engagement with research in palliative care, evidence of emerging grant capture, an increasing portfolio of published research papers and other factors that indicate international esteem. The accompanying statements of support were also scrutinised.

The Panel are both delighted and reassured that there are so many excellent emerging researchers who will contribute to the development of palliative care research and practice.

The overall winner Dr Ralf Jox will give a plenary lecture in the first plenary session of the congress taking place on Thursday, May 19, titled “The Art of Letting Die”.

The Winners:

DR. RALF JOX
Interdisciplinary Center for Palliative Medicine
Munich University Hospital
Munich, Germany
Ralf J. Jox, MD PhD, is a neurologist, palliative care specialist and bioethicist working at the Interdisciplinary Center for Palliative Medicine and the Institute for Ethics, History and Theory of Medicine at the University of Munich, Germany. He studied medicine in Freiburg and Munich, Germany, and at Harvard Medical School in Boston, USA. He is also a trained philosopher from the School of Philosophy in Munich, completed a postgraduate Master in Medical Ethics and Law at King’s College London, UK, and a PhD in Medical and Health Ethics at the University of Basel, Switzerland. His research activities focus on end-of-life care ethics, neuro-palliative care and neuroethics. In a diverse range of empirical and theoretical studies he explored the process of decision making at life’s end and the idea of redirecting the treatment goal from cure to care. He currently coordinates an international research consortium on the end-of-life ethics regarding patients in the vegetative state.
(Download CV here)

DR. RER. MEDIC. SASKIA JÜNGER
Department of Palliative Medicine
University Hospital Bonn
Bonn, Germany
Saskia Jünger is a health scientist with a specialisation in clinical psychology. After her academic studies in Maastricht (NL) she has been working as a research associate at the RWTH Aachen University Hospital (D), since 2004 at the Department of Palliative Medicine. In 2006 she attained her doctoral degree in theoretical medicine with her thesis on multi-professional cooperation in a palliative care team. In recent years, she has been doing research in different projects with a focus on health services research. Today she works as a research associate at the Department of Palliative Medicine at the University Hospital Bonn (D) and she is project executive officer of an EU-funded project on the access to opioid medication in Europe (ATOME). She co-chairs the EAPC Task Force on Education for Psychologists in Palliative Care. Recently she started her PhD in Health Research at Lancaster University (UK) focusing on consensus building in palliative care within a multinational context.
(Download CV here)

DR. JUDITH RIETJENS
Dept. of Public Health
Erasmus MC Rotterdam, the Netherlands
and
End-of-Life Care Research Group
University& Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

Judith Rietjens (1978) works as an assistant professor at the Department of Public Health of Erasmus MC Rotterdam (NL) and at the End-of-Life Care Research Group of the Ghent University& Vrije Universiteit Brussel (BE). She is health scientist by training. In 2010 she was a visiting scholar at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven and in 2005 at the Northwestern University in Chicago. She completed her PhD on the practice of palliative sedation and attitudes of the public and professionals towards end-of-life decisions in 2006.
In 2009, she received a VENI grant (Innovational Research Incentives for Academic Excellence) and a EUR fellowship to continue her studies on the practice of palliative sedation. She coordinates the international EAPC recognized UNBIASED study evaluating the practice of palliative sedation in the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK.
Other research interests of Judith are the quality of death and dying, different perspectives on end-of-life decision-making (e.g. international comparisons; comparisons of perspectives of patients, relatives, and healthcare professionals), and media representations of end-of-life decisions.
(Download CV here)

The criteria on which the decision was made were as follows:

The candidate:

• got nominated by his/her tutor or an associate.
• is at the beginning of his/her professional career in palliative care.
• holds an academic or clinical position in palliative care.
• is a citizen of one of the countries of the EAPC Collective Member Associations (Only candidates from the EAPC member states can be allowed for application.)
• holds or is about to complete a postgraduate degree (e.g. PhD, MD, Masters).
• Candidates who already applied for the award in previous congresses are invited to reapply!

The following must have been evident in applications:

• A strong interest in research in palliative care
• How candidates link research ideas to EAPC research priorities
• Evidence of academic development
• Evidence of clinical and/or applied development
• Quality of application – detail, methods of research, relevance to palliative care.
• An obvious work plan showing personal development
• Evidence of supervision and post graduate training
• Environment candidates have worked in
• Contribution to EAPC
• Evidence of publication
• Evidence of ability to do a presentation (plenary) in English