Death, dying, loss, and care giving are not just medical issues, but societal ones.
Palliative care has become increasingly professionalised, focused around symptom science. With this emphasis on minimizing the harms of physical, psychological, and spiritual stress, there has been a loss of how cultures and communities look after their dying, with the wider social experience of death often sidelined in the professionalisation and medicalisation of care. However, the people we know and love in the places we know and love make up what matters most for those undergoing the experiences of death, loss, and care giving.
Over the last 25 years the theory, practice, research evidence base, and clinical applications have developed, generating widespread adoption of the principles of public health approaches to palliative care. The essential principles of prevention, harm reduction, early intervention, and health and wellbeing promotion can be applied to the universal experience of end of life, irrespective of disease or diagnosis. Compassionate communities have become a routine part of the strategy and service development in palliative care, both within the UK and internationally.
The Oxford Textbook of Public Health Palliative Care provides a reframing of palliative care, bringing together the full scope of theory, practice, and evidence into one volume. Written by international leaders in the field, it provides the first truly comprehensive and authoritative textbook on the subject that will help to further inform developments in this growing specialty.
Part 1 : The Case for Public Health Palliative Care 1: Julia Verne: Demographic and Epidemiological Challenges 2: Philip Larkin: International Palliative Care Policy 3: Allan Kellehear: The Social Nature of Dying and The Social Model of Health 4: Julian Abel, Allan Kellehear, and Aliki Karapliagou: Palliative Care: The New Essentials Part 2 : Basic Concepts and Theory 5: Bruce Rumbold: A History of Public Health Palliative Care 6: Mark Spreckley and Allan Kellehear: The 'New' Public Health: A social model of care 7: Julian Abel: Health and Wellbeing 8: Libby Sallnow: Prevention and Harm-Reduction 9: John Rosenberg: Early Intervention 10: Kerrie Noonan: Participatory Relations Part 3 : Basic Practice Methods 11: Manjula Patel and Kerrie Noonan: Community Development - Compassionate communities 12: Gail Wilson, Emilio Herrera, Silvia Librada, and Allan Kellehear: Compassionate Cities: A social ecology at the end of life 13: Rebecca M. Patterson and Mark A. Hazelwood: Developing End of Life Literacy through Public Education 14: Katherine Pettus and Pati Dzotsenidze: Health Policy 15: Andrea Grindrod: Health Promotion and Palliative care 16: Helen Kingston, Catherine Millington-Sanders, and Julian Abel: Clinical Practice Methods with Community Resources 17: Jason Mills and Shyla Mills: Digital Applications and Public Health Palliative Care Part 4 : Population based approaches 18: Emma Hodges and Nikki Archer: Health Services Redesign 19: Samar Aoun and Bruce Rumbold: Public Health Approaches to Bereavement and Loss 20: Holly Prince, Kathy Kortes-Miller, Kelli Stajduhar, and Denise Marshall: Public Health Palliative Care, Equity-Oriented Care, and Structural Vulnerability 21: Suresh Kumar and Kamala Ramakrishnan: Public Health Palliative Care Design and Practice in Low- and Middle-Income Countries Part 5 : Evidence-Base 22: Joseph Sawyer and Libby Sallnow: The Evidence for the Effectiveness of a Public Health Palliative Care Approach 23: Rosemary Leonard and Debbie Horsfall: The Evidence for the Importance of Naturally Occurring Networks 24: Steven Vanderstichelen and Luc Deliens.: Complexities and Challenges in a Public Health Palliative Care Research 25: Charles Normand: Economic Perspectives on Public Health Approaches to Palliative Care Part 6: Education and Training 26: Mary Hodgson and Heather Richardson.: Pedagogic Approaches for Professional Learning 27: Sally Paul: Public Health Palliative Care Education: Children and Schools 28: Polly Edmonds: Specialist Training: The UK Palliative Medicine Curriculum 29: Bonnie Tompkins and Dan Malleck: Using and Building Toolkits to Support Community Action Part 7: Conclusion and Appendices Julian Abel & Allan Kellehear: Conclusion Appendix A: The Compassionate City Charter- A Charter of Actions Appendix B: Useful Organisational Links
Dr Julian Abel became a consultant in palliative care in 2001. He was the chair of the organising committee for the 4th International Public Health and Palliative Care Conference in 2015 and was Vice President of Public Health Palliative Care International. Since 2016 he has worked with Frome Medical Practice in Somerset in developing a new model of primary care combined with compassionate communities. He is co-author of The Compassion Project which describes the background to the Frome Project and the implications of compassion in medicine and in society at large. Along with Dr Kellehear and Dr Catherine Millington Sanders he formed Compassionate Communities UK, of which he is Director. The charity has been formed to develop broader roll-out of compassionate communities in both primary care and end of life care. Dr Abel also runs a podcast, Survival of the Kindest, about compassion and its absence. Dr Allan Kellehear is Clinical Professor in the College of Nursing and Health Sciences at the University of Vermont, USA. He was formerly 50th Anniversary Professor (End of Life Care) at the University of Bradford in the UK. He has previously held chairs in social sciences, public health, or palliative care at Middlesex, Bath, Tokyo, and La Trobe Universities. He has held honorary professorships in Austria, Australia, Canada, China, Ireland, Japan, United Kingdom, and the USA. He is internationally acknowledged to be the leading academic proponent of health-promoting palliative care and the compassionate communities/cities movement.
