Actionable companion · Leadership practice and organizational learning
From leadership research to district action: Bringing leaders together to support the development of children’s palliative care across the Asia Pacific region—an interdisciplinary workshop
AI-assisted editorial implementation guide. Proposed district actions are separate from the original authors’ findings and recommendations. Independent peer review of this guide is not asserted.
Evidence and transfer
Education-related source: verify which participants, institutions and outcomes were actually studied before district adoption. Source publication type: research-article. License and identity checks do not establish study quality or causality.
Original authors’ abstract, reproduced under the source license:
Globally, there are over 21 million children in need of palliative care. Over a quarter (28%) of these children live in the Asia Pacific region, where access to children’s palliative care is limited or absent. Diversity in culture, economies, and political systems across the region has resulted in significant variation in how health services are developed, funded, and delivered. For children’s palliative care, services are often poorly coordinated across health systems, with limited integration into national health policies. Despite this there is a growing group of passionate clinicians and foundations trying to establish and develop services. This paper describes a 2-day leadership workshop that was held preceding the International Children’s Palliative Care Network conference in the Philippines in November 2025. The primary goal of the workshop was to introduce a health systems approach to equip children’s palliative care leaders and champions to advance palliative care development in their countries, at community, institutional, national and regional levels. The workshop brought together 51 children’s palliative care leaders, representing 17 countries/regions and 42 institutions across the region in addition to 28 international expert facilitators. Feedback from participants highlighted the value of this workshop for growth and development across policy, research, clinical service development, education and training. This workshop lays the foundation for further collaboration and partnerships across Asia Pacific and the world to strengthen children’s palliative care.
Study methods
The workshop was held in-person in November 2025, immediately preceding the ICPCN Conference. Regional and global leaders met online routinely beginning in June 2025, to plan workshop content and sessions. The workshop programme (Appendix 1) highlighted regional developments and best practices and provided opportunities for participants to use the WHO conceptual model for palliative care to co-design approaches that were context-specific and regionally aligned. The workshop content combined expert-led presentations, panel sessions, case studies and small-group activities paired with design thinking exercises to generate collaborative and novel solutions addressing each of the WHO framework pillars. Workshop content was adapted from a successful programme conducted in the Eastern Mediterranean region, in 2024 [15].
Limitations
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A 90-day district inquiry
- Days 1–15 · Appraise. Read the source methods, recruitment, comparator, outcomes and limitations. Record how the study setting differs from your district and which claim the design can support.
- Days 16–30 · Design. Choose one recurring leadership practice described in the source. Map its participants, incentives and constraints to a district setting, then design a small reversible staff pilot with an accountable owner. Agree participation, privacy protections, baseline and stopping rules before starting.
- Days 31–60 · Observe. Collect the pre-agreed measures, keep a log of implementation changes and invite confidential voluntary feedback. Preserve existing support for staff and learners.
- Days 61–90 · Decide. Record implementation fidelity, staff review time, task quality and unintended burdens against a baseline. Use a comparison team where feasible and document alternative explanations before expanding. Make a dated decision to stop, revise or extend the inquiry.
Board decision brief
Present the local problem, source setting, evidence limits, intervention, responsible owner, total cost, measured changes and uncertainty. Separate staff perceptions, implementation measures and student learning outcomes.
Attribution and reuse
Gemma E Aburn; Rima Saad Rassam; Ximena Garcia-Quintero; Marta Salek; Andrea Cuviello; Yadurshini Raveendran; Sri Andini Handayani; Chen Chen Sun; Su Yadana; Sally Blair; Megan Doherty; Min Sun Kim; Zhou Xuan; Marianne B Phillips; Lee Ai Chong; Gayatri Palat; Donna Drew; Justin N Baker; Poh Heng Chong; Julia Downing; Michael J McNeil. Bringing leaders together to support the development of children’s palliative care across the Asia Pacific region—an interdisciplinary workshop. ecancermedicalscience (2026-06-17). https://doi.org/10.3332/ecancer.2026.2149
Prepared 2026-11-07. Source authorship and DOI are preserved. The abstract and source passages are attributed extracts; this editorial guide is offered under the same CC BY 4.0 license.