About Us
IPP-SHR is a collaborative initiative jointly funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council and CQUniversity. The primary aim of this international program in research is to examine and document the human experience of serious illness (both physical and mental). Thus, IPP-SHR is a broad program addressing a wide range of topic areas including: haematology/oncology; mental health; palliative care; acute medicine; bioethics; rural and remote health; Indigenous health; spirituality; paediatrics; birth studies; and service delivery evaluation.
In essence the program is concerned with contributing to the development of psycho-social services that assist people to deal with the many challenges associated with serious physical and/or mental illness. The core work is to ‘make a difference’ and this is achieved through research, publication, education and consultancy activities.
The IPP-SHR Logo
IPP-SHR’s logo is based on a tessellation of dovetailing segments that give the llusion of a circle of movement around a central pivot. This motif provides a diagrammatic representation of the holistic philosophy that informs the present development of the research program. The central pivot is the “individual” and the interlocking segments represent the many aspects of a person’s psycho-social experience.
Originally the program of research started out as a singular exploration of the ethical issues associated with chemotherapy for cancer. It was subsequently understood that the palliative care philosophy and practice provided a protection that both deflected and resolved such ethical problems. The two disciplinary perspectives of ethics and palliative care were essentially linked in understanding the individual circumstance.
To further illuminate the cancer patients’ experience, a psycho-social framework was required. The tessellations around the central pivot of the human experience of serious illness began to broaden. Spirituality was the next dimension seen as essential to inform the holistic view. From a focus on the experience of cancer, the program eventually extended to embrace human challenges such as mental illness. The one consistency in all of the research projects undertaken by IPP-SHR is that, at the centre lies a concern about the human experience for the individual, and this is informed by a kaleidoscope of factors that make up the psycho-social and spiritual dimensions of that experience.
