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Meet Our Speakers

The APHC27OPCC are pleased to welcome our MCs, Keynote & Invited Speakers.  

As new speakers are confirmed they will be updated here, so check back soon. 

Each speaker will bring a unique perspective, knowledge, and experience. So don’t miss the opportunity to hear from these leaders within their respective fields. 

Keynote & Invited Speakers

Dr Poh Heng Chong

Dually trained in adult and pediatric palliative medicine, Dr Chong is Medical Director of HCA Hospice, the largest home and day palliative care agency in Singapore. His diverse professional career spans almost three decades. Dr. Chong first served as a Family Medicine physician, running his own private practice for a decade. Subsequently, he returned to training, specialising in palliative medicine. After completing further subspecialty training in the UK and US, he founded Star PALS (Paediatric Advanced Life Support), the one and only community paediatric palliative care (PPC) programme that supports children with serious illness and their families at home. 

He has published peered-reviewed papers and written book chapters, particularly within the PPC domain. Within the adult sector, his notable contributions include conceptualising a national framework for compassionate discharges of dying patients from hospital to home (both in and out-of-hours). For his contributions within the charity sector, he was awarded Leaders of Good (adult category) winner in 2021 at the President’s National Volunteerism and Philanthropy Award ceremony in Singapore.

Appointed vice-chair of the Singapore Hospice Council, his other focus has been in raising awareness of hospice and palliative care locally, championing optimised access to quality end-of-life care for all. His deepest passion still remains in supporting for children with life-shortening conditions and their families. Active advocacy efforts in this area involves chairing the Asia Pacific Hospice and Palliative Care Network’s (APHN) Paediatric Palliative Care Special Interest Group, promoting training, mentorship and research in the care of vulnerable babies, children and young people across the region

Dr Billy Rosa

Dr. Rosa is an Assistant Attending Behavioral Scientist, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK). He received his PhD and Master of Bioethics from the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Rosa completed MSK’s Hospice & Palliative Medicine Interdisciplinary Clinical Fellowship and served as Chief Fellow of MSK’s NIH/NCI T32 Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Psychosocial, Palliative, and Community Research in Cancer.

Dr. Rosa’s research teams have secured $12+ million USD in federal and philanthropic funding to advance palliative care science. He is the editor of five books, has contributed more than 350 academic publications in journals and. He was Associate Editor for the third edition of the Global Atlas of Palliative Care (in press) and served on the advisory board for the 2024 WISH and WHO report, Palliative Care: How Can We Respond to 10 Years of Limited Progress? He is currently Co-Chair of The Lancet Respiratory Medicine Commission on Palliative Care Integration in Serious Respiratory Illness and has served on The Lancet Oncology Commission on the Human Crisis in Cancer (Commissioner), The Lancet Commission on Breast Cancer (Writing Committee), and The Lancet Commission on Cancer and Health Systems (Collaborator).

Dr. Rosa is currently Co-Chair of the National Coalition for Hospice and Palliative Care clinical practice guideline update and has served on the expert panels for the American Society of Clinical Oncology’s 2024 palliative care guideline update and the global resource-stratified practice guideline (in press). Dr. Rosa is a 2026 Presidential Leadership Scholar, Cambia Health Foundation Sojourns Scholar, and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Harold Amos Scholar and holds honorary fellowships in the American Academy of Nursing (AAN), American Association of Nurse Practitioners, Hospice & Palliative Nursing Association, and the New York Academy of Medicine. In 2024,

Dr. Rosa was named a Visionary in Hospice & Palliative Care by the American Academy of Hospice & Palliative Medicine and has been recognized with numerous distinctions, including the International Association for Hospice & Palliative Care’s (IAHPC’s) Individual Recognition Award (high-income country category) and the International Council of Nurses’ Kim Mo-Im Policy Innovation and Impact Award. He serves on the Board of Directors for both the AAN and IAHPC, is Editor Emeritus of Psycho-Oncology, and is currently Associate Editor for Nursing for the Journal of Pain & Symptom Management.

Conference MCs

Dr Poh Heng Chong

Dr Rachel Coghlan

View Biography Here
View Biography Here

Dr Poh Heng Chong

Dually trained in adult and pediatric palliative medicine, Dr Chong is Medical Director of HCA Hospice, the largest home and day palliative care agency in Singapore. His diverse professional career spans almost three decades. Dr. Chong first served as a Family Medicine physician, running his own private practice for a decade. Subsequently, he returned to training, specialising in palliative medicine. After completing further subspecialty training in the UK and US, he founded Star PALS (Paediatric Advanced Life Support), the one and only community paediatric palliative care (PPC) programme that supports children with serious illness and their families at home. 

He has published peered-reviewed papers and written book chapters, particularly within the PPC domain. Within the adult sector, his notable contributions include conceptualising a national framework for compassionate discharges of dying patients from hospital to home (both in and out-of-hours). For his contributions within the charity sector, he was awarded Leaders of Good (adult category) winner in 2021 at the President’s National Volunteerism and Philanthropy Award ceremony in Singapore.

Appointed vice-chair of the Singapore Hospice Council, his other focus has been in raising awareness of hospice and palliative care locally, championing optimised access to quality end-of-life care for all. His deepest passion still remains in supporting for children with life-shortening conditions and their families. Active advocacy efforts in this area involves chairing the Asia Pacific Hospice and Palliative Care Network’s (APHN) Paediatric Palliative Care Special Interest Group, promoting training, mentorship and research in the care of vulnerable babies, children and young people across the region

Dr Rachel Coghlan

Dr Rachel Coghlan is a practitioner and researcher working across palliative care, rehabilitation, humanitarian response and global health. She brings public health and human rights advocacy to her work, with a focus on making care systems more compassionate, inclusive, just and useful.

A Fulbright Scholar, Rachel’s PhD explored palliative care in the Gaza Strip. She is currently supporting palliative care responses in Ukraine, Syria and Lebanon. Rachel combines clinical practice with qualitative research and community co‑design to centre real people’s stories — listening to, learning from and amplifying the voices of those affected by serious illness, crisis and conflict. Curious, attentive and persistent, she writes and speaks to bring more humanity and compassion to conversations about living, dying and grieving. Her work has appeared in journals and media outlets including The Guardian, the ABC, Crikey, Women’s Agenda, MJA Insight Plus and Arena Magazine.

Rachel is a researcher at the Nossal Institute for Global Health, University of Melbourne, and a physiotherapist at Calvary Health Care Bethlehem. She is a Board member of Palliative Care Australia and a Council Member of the Asia Pacific Hospice Palliative Care Network.

She lives with her husband, two teenage boys and two dogs on Dja Dja Wurrung country — in an old church in a paddock, where she writes in the belfry among the occasional bush microbat and kookaburra laughing from the rooftop.