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.
Conference MCs
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.