Prof. Julia Downing is a Board Member of the International Society of Nurses in Cancer Care and the Chair of the ISNCC Policy and Advocacy Committee. She is the Chief Executive of the International Children’s Palliative Care Network and also has honorary and visiting roles at Universities in Uganda, Serbia and the UK. She is an experienced cancer and palliative care nurse, educationalist, advocate and researcher. She has worked internationally for >20 years initially in Uganda, across sub-Saharan Africa, and Globally. She has been working in sub-Saharan Africa for 23 years and first worked in Ghana in 2007 and has since been involved in the development of palliative care in Ghana and is currently working on a one-year grant from the UK government to build capacity for children’s palliative care and through this is working with the Ghana College of Nurses and Midwives. 

She is passionate about both nursing and palliative care and has led three leadership programmes for nurses in Uganda and one in Kenya and has been involved in researching the leadership needs of nurses and midwives within the region. She supervises and examines PhDs and MSc projects from across sub-Saharan Africa and has extensive experience in education. She has published more than 180 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, as well as edited several books and contributed chapters to a range of palliative care and nursing books. She has received many awards and was a top 10 finalist in the inaugural Aster Guardians Global Nursing Award in 2022.  The impact of her research is far-reaching and cited in nursing and health-related journals.