Together for Short Lives
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Dr Helena Dunbar

Photo of Helena Dunbar
Director of Service Development and Improvement

Dr Helena Dunbar PhD, MSc, PG Cert, BA (Hons), RGN/RSCN joined Together for Short Lives in March 2021 as the Director of Service Development and Improvement.

Helena has a strategic role at Together for Short Lives, helping to ensure the growing number of children with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions and their families can access high quality palliative care regardless of where they live in the UK.

Helena is an experienced children’s nurse with 30 years in practice. Helena was Associate Professor of Teaching and Learning and Head of Division at De Montfort University’s Leicester School of Nursing and Midwifery, where she has led the design and delivery of teaching and learning in children’s/adult nursing for the last eight years. At De Montfort University Leicester, Helena will continue there as an Honorary Senior Research Fellow – currently undertaking a study with Dr Tania Hart (funded by Burdett Trust for Nursing) looking at wellbeing and resiliency in siblings aged 11-14 years of children with life-limiting conditions.

Helena is widely published on issues relating to child health and children’s palliative care. Her PhD focused on Place Bonding in Children’s Hospices, working closely with Rainbows Hospice for Children and Young People in Loughborough. And earlier this year Helena was awarded a Winston Churchill Fellowship to explore palliative care provision, education and training in an international context.

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