EAPC Head Office Team

The head office team is made up of professionals from different areas and skills, who work in an interdisciplinary way to drive forward the EAPC’s strategic objectives. Learn more about our staff members, their nationality, the year they start working in our team, and their professional profile

photo julie ling

Julie Ling

CEO
Ireland

Since 2015

photo girl

Christine Harvey

Administration & Membership Officer
Northern Ireland

Since 2021

photo Joanne Brennan

Joanne Brennan

Project Officer: EAPC Groups & Communications
Ireland

Since 2021

photo Catherine White

Catherine White

Blog Editor
United Kingdom

Since 2022

photo Claudia Sütfeld

Claudia Sütfeld

Congress Coordinator
Germany

Since 2018

photo Cathy Payne

Cathy Payne

Research & Project Manager
Northern Ireland

Since 2018

photo Carla Reigada

Carla Reigada

Project Officer: EU Funded Projects
Portugal

Since 2022

photo Patricia White

Patricia White

Project Officer: EU Funded Projects
Belgium

Since 2023

photo Fódhla Ní Chéileachair

Fódhla Ní Chéileachair

Project Officer: EU Funded Projects
Northern Ireland

Since 2022

photo Guillermo Palacios

Guillermo Palacios

Web Specialist
Spain

Since 2022

Meet the team

Julie Ling has been CEO of the European Association for Palliative Care since January 2015.  Originally a nurse, Julie has worked in palliative care for over thirty years in both adult and children’s palliative care.  She has held a variety of posts in clinical care; management; research; policy and the voluntary sector.  

In July 2021, Julie was appointed as a Consultant – Technical Specialist on Palliative care at the World Health Organisation Europe.

Julie is currently involved in the following EU research projects:

  • MyPal: Fostering Palliative Care of Adults and Children with Cancer through Advanced Patient Reported Outcome Systems Home page – MYPAL
  • ´Palliative Sedation’ – The use of proportional palliative sedation for the relief of refractory symptoms. Home page – Palliative Sedation
  • DIAdIC: Dyadic Psychosocial Interventions for people with Advanced cancer and their Informal Caregivers Home page- DIAdIC
  • NursEduPal@Euro: Palliative Care Core Competencies and novel European matrix for educating bachelor-degree nurses Home page- nursedupal.eu
  • RESPACC: Research for all palliative care clinicians (RESPACC)
    Ref. no.: 2020-1-RO01-KA202-080128
  • EDUPALL: Translating International Recommendations into Undergraduate Palliative Care Curriculum Home page- EDUPALL (knowledge dissemination of completed project)

Julie has written and published on various aspects of palliative care, many in peer-reviewed journals.  Julie is also a member of the editorial board for the International Journal of Palliative Nursing and a reviewer for several other palliative care journals.

Julie is currently chair of the World Hospice and Palliative Care Alliance, a global palliative care organisation that lobbies and advocates for the provision of palliative care as part of universal health coverage.   She is also a member of the board of the Health Research Board, Ireland. 

Orcid ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6187-8253

Christine joined the EAPC in 2021 in a part-time role working from home in Northern Ireland.

Joanne lives on a farm in Kilkenny, Ireland with her husband, their 2 children and a variety of animals! She qualified as a physiotherapist in the UK in 1997. In 1999 she began working at the Christie Hospital NHS Trust as a specialist oncology physiotherapist and it was here that her interest in palliative and end-of-life care began to grow. Throughout her clinical career she has concentrated on the provision of physiotherapy for people diagnosed with cancer. Providing support for those going through treatment, surviving beyond treatment, living with cancer or dying from cancer. Her greatest teachers, and those whom have had the most impact and influence on her have been the people (patients and their loved ones) she has worked with.

Education, advocacy and quality improvement have always been an important part of her work and she has extensive experience in these both in physiotherapy and also in end-of-life care. In 2007 she began working with the Irish Hospice Foundation (IHF) on their ‘Hospice Friendly Hospitals’ programme, an ambitious project which aimed to improve the delivery of end-of-life care in Ireland on a national scale. She has contributed to the development, design and delivery of the IHF’s healthcare training programmes and continues to deliver education, training and support to staff throughout the country in hospitals and residential care settings. She is passionate about person-centred end-of-life care and her aim through this work is to support healthcare staff to be confident and comfortable when communicating with patients and their loved ones, particularly in end-of-life situations.

Joanne joined the EAPC in April 2021. She is thankful for the opportunity to work with the EAPC head office team, Board and the many experts of the palliative care community who are part of the EAPC Task Force and Reference Groups.

Catherine White joined the EAPC as part time Blog Editor in February 2022. She also works as a Clinical Trial Advisor at Imperial College, London, and she is a member of the National Institute for Health & Care Excellence (NICE) technology appraisal and highly specialised technologies appeal panel. She has had varied health related roles including as a non-executive director for a NHS Clinical Commissioning Group, Chief Executive for ICUsteps (the UK intensive care patient and relative support charity) and Chair for National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) Guideline 204. She is interested in healthcare and research communication, especially when improving clinical care and healthcare experiences.

Claudia Sütfeld has been working as Congress Coordinator for the European Association for Palliative Care since January 2018. Being an editorial journalist, Claudia has been working in the field of palliative care for over ten years. She launched a “Hospice and Palliative Care Week” (“Hospiz- und Palliativwoche”), edited a cookbook for “the ones that are left behind” (“Pudding ist Seelsorge”) and set up a “Death Café”. Claudia worked with the German Corporation for International Cooperation (GIZ) in development aid in several African countries. She also lived in New York and Canada for a few years, working as a journalist. She has experience in TV and radio broadcasting as well as in working for newspapers, political parties and advertisement agencies. Furthermore, Claudia has build a career as paintress. She has had various exhibitions and over many years given art classes in her own art studio.

She is currently setting up a blog about “Death and the city – cemeteries and the stories they tell” and a project about “Arts in palliative Care”.

Cathy is a Research and Project Manager for the European Association for Palliative Care, based in Northern Ireland. EAPC is a core partner of many large European Union funded studies, with knowledge transfer and stakeholder engagement as a primary focus.

Cathy has worked within specialist palliative care since 2004, as a clinical dietitian, a lecturer and a researcher. Her research interests include palliative rehabilitation, cachexia, nutritional support, interprofessional working and eLearning. She created and co-hosts the Palliative Rehabilitation Facebook Group which has over 2600 members from across the world and is an associate editor for the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle (JCSM)

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3444-2387

Carla has been working in palliative care since 2007. For 8 years she was part of a palliative care team in Portugal where she started her research, teaching and consulting work in this area. In the last years, she has dedicated herself exclusively to the study of the message of palliative care in society. She is expert in qualitative studies and participatory methodologies (design thinking and gamification), and public engagement in Responsible Research and Innovation studies.  

Former member of the Portuguese Palliative Care Commission (Ministry of Health) and the EAPC Social Work Task Force. Currently, she co-coordinates the Social Work Team of the APCP, she is a member of the Board of Directors of PALIAN and is co-founder and board member of BABESPEAN – an “Open-Hospice for Life Care”. 

Carla has certifications in Design Thinking and Innovation (Harvard Business School), in Coaching and Leadership, and in Project Management (University of Dublin). She is now a Project Officer for the European Association for Palliative Care, and she is currently involved in the following EU research projects: 

  • “Palliative Sedation” – The use of proportional palliative sedation for the relief of refractory symptoms https://palliativesedation.eu/ 
  • Pal-Cycles” – Palliative Care Yields Cancer Wellbeing Support  
  •  “MyPath” – The digital solution to patient-centred cancer care pathways https://mypath-cancercare.eu/ 
  • “EU-Navigate” – Implementation and evaluation of a navigation intervention for people with cancer in old age and their family caregivers webpage 

 

Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Carla-Reigada 

Email: carla.reigada@eapcnet.eu  

Patricia lives in Brussels and began working as a Project Officer with the European Association for Palliative Care in March 2023.  She has spent much of her career working as a project officer and healthcare researcher in university and clinical settings.  With a background in health psychology she has worked extensively in the areas of chronic illness and palliative care and was involved with the Irish Hospice Foundation’s (IHF) ‘Palliative Care for All’ programme.  More recently Patricia held the position of end-of-life care coordinator in an acute hospital.  

Currently she works on the following EU research projects: 

Fódhla joined the EAPC as a part-time project officer in August 2022. She has previously worked as a researcher for projects on palliative rehabilitation and inequalities in palliative care for older individuals in Ireland. She also co-authored a review for the Irish Department of Health to inform a new iteration of national policy for palliative care.  

She is currently involved in the following EU projects: 

ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Fodhla-Ni-Cheileachair 

Orcid ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5980-4124 

Guillermo is our web and application development specialist, lives in Madrid and started working at the European Association for Palliative Care in November 2022. 

In his last years of work he has focused on digitization and database management, apart from developing his own company focused on his hobby, climbing.

He is currently involved transversally in the whole organization, both in the EAPC and in the EU funded projects.