Cohen, J. (2025). Palliative Care as a Public Health Issue. In: MacLeod, R.D., Van den Block, L. (eds) Textbook of Palliative Care. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-31738-0_123-1
Abstract
In this chapter, palliative care will be positioned as a public health issue and thus a public health approach to palliative care as a necessity. Palliative care has been defined in various ways, by professional organizations but also in public information, and often in a rather narrow way as a type of professional health care or health services in which professionals need to care for people with palliative needs and their families. However, this creates tensions about the various efforts falling outside of the traditional professional sphere or clinical consultations, such as prevention, health promotion, self-management, patient empowerment, and collective policies. Framing palliative care as a public health issue or applying a public health approach to palliative care implies a recognition of the importance of policies and practices beyond the clinical or health service context. In this chapter, I will present three arguments to why a public health approach to palliative care is needed, and three types of approaches on what would constitute a public health approach, and how to integrate them.
