From left: Mr. Olamide Grillo, Mrs. Hilda Sasere, Mrs. Angela Edozie-Ogili, Ms. Titi Tade, Mrs. Ann Abiola Ogbenna, Mrs. Kehinde Aikomo, Miss Mariam Liasu, Mrs. Gloria Oguama, Mr. Mike Meretighan. Not pictured: Mrs. Peju Olorundare, Ms.Gladys Obinyan, Mrs. Nnena Edeh
With a rapidly growing population and high rates of life-threatening diseases, Nigeria urgently needs social workers trained in palliative care to help patients and their families navigate the challenges of terminal illnesses. The situation led Dr. Ann Ogbenna at Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) in Nigeria’s capital, to search online for help. She found it in NYU Silver’s Zelda Foster Studies Program in Palliative and End-of-Life (Zelda Program).
“There is a paucity of platforms to learn about palliative care for health care workers in Nigeria and few health care workers in the country have knowledge of [it],” Dr. Ogbenna said in an email to Clinical Professor and Zelda Program Founding Director Susan Gerbino. Dr. Ogbenna explained that LUTH aims to incorporate palliative care into the academic curriculum at its various schools for health care workers, starting with their school of social work. “While looking through the web for information on how to develop the curriculum,” she wrote, “I came across your name and Zelda Foster Studies Program.”
Dr. Gerbino was soon meeting virtually with Dr. Ogbenna, Mrs. Kehinde Iyabode Aikomo, the Director/Head of the School of Medical & Psychiatry Social Work, and Ms. Titi Tade, the Director/Head of the Medical Social Services Department at LUTH, to assess their needs. “The fact that Dr. Ogbenna reached out to us is confirmation that the Zelda Program is an exemplar out in the world of what good social work training can be,” said Dr. Gerbino. Recalling Zelda Foster, the late hospice and palliative care pioneer who is the program’s namesake, Dr. Gerbino said “Zelda would have wanted us to do something like this. She very much believed in the global movement of palliative care.”
After their meeting, Dr. Gerbino developed an eight-module, 16-hour, virtual primary palliative care training to meet LUTH’s most pressing needs. She secured funding from NYU Silver and The 291 Foundation and mobilized a team composed mostly of Zelda Program alumni, faculty and mentors to join her in teaching. She also consulted on the curriculum with Dr. Zainab Suntai, MSW ’19, a Zelda Program MSW Fellow from Nigeria, who is now a Research Specialist at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign School Social Work.
In June and July 2024, the Zelda Program delivered the training virtually in real-time to LUTH’s 11-person medical social work department, with Mrs. Aikomo and Ms. Tade, and periodically, Dr. Ogbenna also in attendance. Because power and internet service frequently cut out in Lagos, the sessions were also recorded. Moreover, the Zelda team put together a Google Drive with all the training materials, resources, and supplementary readings. Mrs. Aikomo plans to adapt the Zelda Program’s lessons for Nigerian culture and incorporate them in the school’s one-year professional certificate program, which reaches social workers across the country. The Medical Social Services department will provide the practical experience component of the one-year training program.
The training began with a two-session introduction to palliative care and social work practice taught by Bridget Sumser, MSW ’12, and Eunju Lee, who have considerable experience training across cultures. They then met with Dr. Gerbino and the rest of the faculty – Rachel Rusch, MSW ’16, Terry Altilio, Solimar Santiago Warner, DSW ’22, Dana Ribeiro Miller and Arika Patneaude – to share insights for teaching the remaining units. Other topics covered included pediatric palliative care, the importance of communication and child and adult bereavement. The training ended with a session on developing and sustaining a palliative care service, including provider self-care.
“The social workers at LUTH are very smart, engaged and deeply committed to this work,” said Dr. Gerbino. “They have very few resources and they are caring for children and adults who are quite ill, in a country where many diseases are stigmatized, and death generally isn’t spoken about. It is exciting to help bring palliative care social work to a country where it is so greatly needed.”