CoPPAR Network - Collaboration of Paediatric Palliative Care Research Network

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15 May 2026

Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice are proud to be part of the Collaboration of Paediatric Palliative Care Research (CoPPAR) Network, a national collaboration to strengthen research in children’s palliative care. The CoPPAR Network is led by Professor Lorna Fraser, a Professor of Palliative Care and Child Heath at Kings College London and a member of Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice’s Board of Trustees.  

The CoPPAR Network was created in 2023 and is hosted by Together for Short Lives (in partnership with Martin House Research Centre and the Association of Paediatric Palliative Medicine) to bring organisations and researchers together to build a stronger evidence base for children with life-threatening and life-limiting conditions and those needing end-of-life care.  

The CoPPAR Network aims to address the current gap in quality research in paediatric palliative care by developing research partnerships and delivering national high-quality research. Delivering this research requires a shared and collaborative response between the academic and paediatric palliative care sector. 

The vision of the network is that it will become the single point of information for all paediatric palliative care research across the UK that can be accessed by researchers, clinicians, parents and young people, and policy makers to enable more effective and efficient delivery of research in this sector. 

CoPPAR Objectives: 

  • To work with eight sites (including children’s hospices and NHS palliative care teams) to develop research readiness using methods that can be scaled up to other hospices and NHS paediatric palliative care sites 

  • To deliver a series of educational webinars on key components of research activity. 

  • To establish a process whereby those developing and delivering research studies can access a network of PPI (patient and public involvement) partners. PPI is a key requirement in modern health & social care research, particularly for UK NIHR-funded projects 

  • To offer mentor opportunities to staff interested in a research career to apply for fellowships including NIHR (The National Institute for Health and Care Research) predoctoral or doctoral awards 

  • To develop guidance on appropriate research methods in palliative and end-of-life care in children 

  • To develop a minimum of two bids for the stage two of the NIHR commissioned call on palliative and end of life care 

Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice supported the application for funding for the CoPPAR Network from NIHR and in May 2025 supported with its first collaborative project by recruiting for a multicentred pilot study on the prescribing of Midazolam in paediatric palliative care. 

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