Webinar: Honoring Cultural Values in Palliative Care

Join the Cynthia Goh Palliative Care Fellowship (CGF) Batch 2 in commemorating World Hospice & Palliative Care Day (WHPCD) with a special webinar!

This session will explore how palliative care resonates deeply with cultural values and worldviews, emphasizing that care at the end of life is not only medical but also profoundly cultural. By framing palliative care as aligned with indigenous values and beliefs more broadly, we invite participants to reflect on their own traditions and perspectives, and consider how these can be meaningfully integrated into palliative care practice.

Programme highlights

• Sharing insights on how palliative care aligns with cultural values and worldviews.
• Reflections from diverse perspectives on integrating cultural beliefs into care.
• Dialogue inviting participants to contribute their own experiences and approaches.

Date & Time: 09 Oct 2026 (Friday), 5:00pm-6:00pm (Singapore time)

Platform: Zoom

For this session, we are honoured to have Fellows from Batch 2 of the (CGF): Dr Malama Tafuna’i (Primary Care Physician, Apia, Samoa) as our speaker and moderated by Dr Ann Toh (Principal Resident Physician, HCA Hospice Care Singapore).

Speaker Bio

Dr Malama Tafuna’i
Lama (the name she prefers to go by) is a Samoan primary care physician who has been advocating for palliative care for over a decade. She recently served as interim CEO of the Samoa Cancer Society (2024- 2026) and was the former clinical director of the National Kidney Foundation of Samoa (NKFS;2014–2018). She helped draft a palliative care pathway for the NKFS and the essential palliative medicines list for Samoa’s essential medicines list. A postdoc fellow at Yale (2025) researching Palliative care in Samoa and a current Cynthia Goh Palliative Care Fellow and Atlantic Fellow for Social Equity, she believes formal palliative care should be an integral part of health systems in Pacific Island nations/LMICs like Samoa, and continues working to embed palliative care into Samoa’s services.

Moderator

Dr Ann Toh
Dr Ann Toh is a Principal Resident Physician at HCA Hospice, Singapore, where she delivers family-centred whole-person care to children, adolescents, and young adults with life-threatening and life-limiting illnesses. She is a 2026 Cynthia Goh Palliative Care Fellow (Batch 2) and an Adjunct Lecturer at the National University of Singapore, with joint appointments at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, the Centre for Biomedical Ethics, and the Centre for Healthcare Simulation. As a medical educator, she is actively involved in shaping undergraduate curriculum in the areas of community-based education, social determinants of health, social accountability, interprofessional education, global health, and compassion training. She also serves as a volunteer advocating for marginalized populations locally and in the region.

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/xZP1V38GRGexN4Cxl2G13w