Health-promoting palliative care: A practice example

Abstract

Although the development and spread of health-promoting palliative care is well known in Australia, as a form of community support facilitated by palliative care services, little is known about its actual practice outside that country. This article summarizes the main rationale and concepts of health-promoting palliative care, lists some of the key policy and academic writing on the subject, and provides one example of its practice. Health-promoting palliative care translates hospice ideals of ‘whole person care’ into broader public health language and practices related to prevention, harm reduction, support, education, and community action. How these ideas express themselves in partnerships between palliative care and the wider community to enhance the quality of life of individuals and communities living with dying, death and loss is described from an Australian example.