Public Health & Palliative Care

Palliative care and end-of-life care have come a long way in the past twenty years. From being historically designed to address the needs of advanced cancer patients in the last days or weeks of life, research evidence and best practice models of palliative care now advocate for early intervention across all chronic life-threatening illnesses. Palliative care has the potential to improve both the quality of dying and the quality of life for people at the end of life and their social surroundings. There is also an increasing awareness that in order to improve the circumstances surrounding the process of dying, we require a public health approach alongside professional health services. The public’s involvement in care provision has shown great potential in developing sustainable palliative care systems, ready to face current and future societal challenges related to ageing populations with multiple health conditions.
A public health approach to palliative care is the most under-developed angle at this stage of palliative care development, yet it is the approach that has the most potential to enhance the quality of life and wellbeing of the largest number of people in sickness and in health, in dying and in loss, and in all aspects of caring for one another.

Public health approaches involve:

  • strategies for the planning and development of appropriate service provision in palliative care;
  •  strategies for the monitoring of the needs assessment, quality of palliative care and social equity at a population level;
  •  strategies for community involvement in health and wellbeing, including experiences of death, dying, loss and care. This ‘new’ public health in palliative care is also known as health-promoting palliative care and involves organising public health actions and evaluating their outcomes.
group chairs public health and palliative care Luc Deliens and Joachim Cohen

The Reference Group is chaired by Luc Deliens, Professor of Palliative Care Research and Joachim Cohen, Professor of Public Health & Palliative Care from the End-of-Life Research Group, Vrije Universiteit Brussel & Ghent University, Belgium

Webinars

More Info & Resources

The group presented a webinar on 31 May 2023: The Case for Public Health Palliative Care. 

Speaker slides are available here for download: 

Julian Able  /  Julia Verne  /  Phil Larkin

Resources

2022

  • Core Publication

    Report of the Lancet Commission on the Value of Death: bringing death back into life

2021

  • Core Publication

    Assessing the development of palliative care worldwide. a set of actionable indicators

2021

  • Core Publication

    Quality health services and palliative care: practical approaches and resources to support policy, strategy and practice

2021

  • Core Publication

    Last Aid and Public Health Palliative Care: Towards the development of personal skills and strengthened community action

2020

  • Core Publication

    Compassionate Cities: global significance and meaning for palliative care

2020

  • Core Publication

    Bereavement support: From the poor cousin of palliative care to a core asset of compassionate communities

2019

  • Core Publication

    Matching response to need: What makes social networks fit for providing bereavement support?

2018

2018

  • Core Publication

    A Public Health Approach to Integrate Palliative Care into a Country’s Health-Care System: Guidance as Provided by the WHO

Newsletter

EAPC Blogs

  • February 2022

    Does big data have a role in palliative care research? By Joachim Cohen

  • January 2022

    What happens when palliative care is neglected as a public health priority? By Luc Deliens

  • April 2021

    The abstracts of the online 2nd International Seminar of EAPC RN and the EAPC Reference Group on Public Health and Palliative Care “Public Health Research in Palliative Care: Towards Solutions for Global Challenges’’ are published in Palliative Care and Social Practice:

Steering Committe

Samar Aoun

Samar Aoun

Australia

Professor, Head of Palliative Care Research

Perron Institute, University of Western Australia
Allan Kellehear

Allan Kellehear

United Kingdom
Professor at Northumbria University, Dept Social Work, Education and Community Wellbeing

Sonja McIlfatrick

United Kingdom

Professor Palliative Care Research Dean of the Ulster Doctoral College

Ulster University Northern Ireland, United Kingdom

Libby Sallnow

United Kingdom

Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer

St Christopher's Hospice, CNWL NHS Trust, UCL Marie Curie Palliative Care Research Department
Agnes van der Heide

Agnes van der Heide

The Netherlands
Professor at Erasmus MC
Steven Vanderstichelen

Steven Vanderstichelen

Belgium

Secretary of the EAPC Reference Group

Postdoctoral fellow at the End-of-Life Care Research Group Vrije Universiteit Brussel & Ghent University