Dr Stephen R. Connor is Executive Director of the UK charity, Worldwide Hospice Palliative Care Alliance
(WHPCA), a global alliance of 250 national and regional hospice and palliative care organizations in 92
countries in official relations with WHO. WHPCA, advocates, communicates, and helps develop palliative
care worldwide with a focus on low and middle income countries.
Dr Connor has worked in palliative care continuously for the past 41 years as a researcher, licensed
health psychologist, consultant, author, educator, advocate, & executive. During his career he has
served as chief executive of four US hospices, international palliative care consultant for the Open
Society Foundation, and for eleven years (1998-2009) was vice president for research and development
at the National Hospice & Palliative Care Organization (US). He has served as a steering group member
for the WHO Technical Advisory Groupon Comprehensive Cervical Cancer Control (2010-13) and the
WHO Ad Hoc Technical Advisory Group on Palliative and Long Term Care.
For the last 17 years Dr Connor has worked on global palliative care development in over 25 countries in
Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, and Asia. He a trustee of the International Children’s Palliative Care
Network, on the scientific advisory board of the (US) National Palliative Care Research Center, and is a
member of the editorial board of the Journal of Pain & Symptom Management.
Connor has published over 125 peer reviewed journal articles, reviews, and book chapters on issues
related to palliative care for patients and their families and is the author of Hospice: Practice, Pitfalls,
and Promise (1998), Hospice and Palliative Care: The Essential Guide (2009 & 2017) and co-editor of the
WHPCA/WHO Global Atlas of Palliative Care at the End-of-Life (2014) and Building Integrated Palliative
Care Programs and Services (2017).