Projects related to community and settings approaches to the social challenges of serious illness, death, dying and loss (Compassionate communities)
ID
MSCA-22-SDury01
Supervisors
Project description
COCO welcomes project proposals in the following broad, interdisciplinary themes:
- Operationalizing and measuring compassion.
- Studying transitions towards and the sustainability of Compassionate Communities.
- Compassionate workplaces.
- Compassionate schools and learning environments.
- compassionate housing, design and city planning.
We welcome highly innovative and interdisciplinary study proposal with the aim or strong potential to achieve social impact. COCO offers a large, interdisciplinary consortium and international network within which Fellows and their research will be embedded. Depending on the particular nature of the proposal a suitable supervisor will be selected and a project group can be constructed together with the MSCA Fellow.
About the research Group
Compassionate Communities Centre of Expertise
The Compassionate Communities Centre of Expertise (COCO) is an interdisciplinary research consortium of 8 research groups across 4 faculties at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. COCO conducts research into community approaches to serious illness, death, dying, loss and grief. Throughout our lifetime we are all confronted by situations of serious illness, death, dying, loss and grief. There is a growing awareness that solely engaging more professional caregivers and improving health or social services will be insufficient toward guaranteeing good healthcare or social care for all those in need. Furthermore, serious illness, death, dying and loss are increasingly recognized as social challenges with a medical component, rather than vice versa. Health and wellbeing, including at the end of life, are increasingly considered not products of absence of illness or of medical care, but rather holistic social, political, economic and ecological processes. In response, Compassionate Communities – emerging from public health approaches to palliative care – aim to strengthen community ties and networks and promote power-sharing, ownership of care, and community support to improve and maintain the health and well-being of people and communities confronted by serious illness, death, dying and loss. Compassionate Communities encompass a collection of possible approaches that apply the health-promoting principles of prevention, harm reduction, and early intervention to the challenges of serious illness, death, dying, and loss. This may be done via top–down, whole-system approaches that reorient settings and institutions through policy interventions or that extend health services to local governments, workplaces, and schools. It may also be done via bottom–up, community development approaches that leverage local assets to answer local needs and mobilize community members and local organizations in the social and cultural sector (e.g., art institutions, popular culture, and media).
More on our website: https://coco.research.vub.be/