Professor Samar Aoun AM

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Professor Samar Aoun is Perron Institute Research Chair in Palliative Care at The University of Western Australia. She is an inspirational champion for improved palliative care and greatly respected for her leadership and advocacy for a public health approach to palliative care and grief support, with greater community involvement. She is known as an innovator and a champion of practice and policy translation.

Professor Aoun’s research contribution has earned her international recognition, helping to improve understanding of palliative care and bereavement care and the opportunities for improvement through the compassionate communities model of care, with closer integration of clinical and community care aspects.

Her particular focus on improving the end-of-life journey for under-served groups such as people with motor neurone disease (MND) and dementia, terminally ill people who live alone, and family carers before and after bereavement, is one of the many ways she is making a difference.

For palliative care to be accessible to everyone and everywhere, Professor Aoun’s vision is to make sure that every person, every family and every community knows what to do when someone is caring, dying or grieving. For this, she advocates for improving death literacy and grief literacy and for normalising having such conversations. Death, dying, grief and loss are everyone’s business and everyone’s responsibility in the community.

In a voluntary capacity, Professor Aoun is co-founder and chair of the South West Compassionate Communities Network in Western Australia, and more recently the founder and chair of the national peak body Compassionate Communities Australia, 2023 President of MND Australia, Vice President and then President of the MND Association of WA for the last ten years, and a board member of Palliative Care WA.   At the international level, she is a member of Public Health Palliative Care International, and the European Association for Palliative Care reference group on public health palliative care.

Among numerous awards, Professor Aoun received the Medal for Excellence from the European Society for Person Centred Healthcare in 2018, the Centenary Medal in 2003 from Australia’s Prime Minister, 2023 WA Australian of the Year, and in 2025 she was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for significant service to community health through palliative care and aged care research and tertiary education.

Compassionate Communities

Compassionate Connectors Program
Compassionate City Charter
Compassionate Workplaces 

Media

Cosmos – The number of people dying in the next 25 years is going to double, so who’s going to look after us?
Caresearch – Supporting People and Their Families
The Senior – MND UK study shows empathy needed when diagnosis is told
Bunbury Herald – City of Bunbury embraces Compassionate Communities Charter
South Western Times – Palliative care expert and 2023 WA Australian of the Year shares insights into death and dying
The Conversation – What actually is palliative care? And how is it different to end-of-life care?
Palliative Care Australia – Professor Samar Aoun: We need to build death literacy in order to create Compassionate Communities
Australian Ageing Agenda – Professor Aoun: Everyone dies, let’s talk about it

Interviews

GWN News – Bunbury Professor West Australian of the Year
ABC Australia – Improving palliative care education
SBS (Arabic) – Don’t Fear Talking About Death
Triple M – The Drive Home With Cliff – Everything Southwest
ABC – The Year That Made Me
ABC Regional Drive WA (Pilbara) – Dying to Know Day 2023
10 News – Dying to Know Day 2023
Podcast on the Wisdom of Women ( International Women’s Day) 
ABC Radio South West – Dominique Bayens
ABC Breakfast: January 18th, 2023
Forever now Podcast – #COMPassion Putting the passion back in Compassion: Community pull together to drive Palliative Care
6PR Radio: January 27th, 2025 – Professor Samar Aoun AM appointed a Member of the Order of Australia
SBS Arabic: January 24th, 2025 (Translation available in browser) – A Great Honour: Lebanese-Australian Professor Samar Aoun Honoured as Member of the Order of Australia

Recorded Presentations

Palliative Care Australia – Thursdays@3: Ep 2 “You only die once so make it a good one”
Town of Cambridge – Growing Compassion in Life and Death 
State Library of Western Australia – Matters of Life and Death
Les Turning ALS Foundation – Compassionate Communities for ALS MND Supporting those Caring, Dying and Grieving
Auspire Lunch with Leaders – You Only Die Once
Public Health Palliative Care (PHPCI) international Webinar
2023 Oceanic Palliative Care Conference  – What have been your key takeaways from 230PCC?
From Aspiration to Evidence to Practice – Professor Samar Aoun
Compassionate Communities Australia launch March 27, 2024
FightMND Scientific Seminar Series – July 2024
MND Family Carer Support Educational Program Video